Yakov Protazanov - Chiny i lyudi AKA Ranks and People (1929)

Quote:
From his early silent works, the great Russian film director, Herr Yakov Protazanov, made literary adaptations from equally great Russian writers, as is the case with "Chiny I Lyudi" ( Ranks And People ) (1929) in which three short stories by Chekhov, "Anna On The Neck", "Death Of A Petty Official" and "Chameleon" were assembled for the silent screen.
"Anna On The Neck" tells the story the young and beautiful Anna (Mariya Strelkova ) who has just married an old but rich civil servant. Anna thinks her marriage will rescue her father and her two brothers from a miserable life of poverty. Anna becomes disenchanted fast when her rich husband turns out to be an avaricious and severe man. Anna's sad life changes when she attends a posh ball and every man there, including the mayor, is charmed by her. Anna's husband hopes to get business advantages through this but Anna is thinking of revenge.

Yakov Protazanov - Sorok pervyy AKA The Forty-First (1927)

The Forty-First, Boris Lavrenyev’s novella, written in only two days, has proven enduringly popular. It tells the story of a young woman snarpshooter fighting with the Reds in Turkestan. She misses her forty-first victim, a handsome White lieutenant, and ends up escorting him, by boat, into captivity across the Aral Sea. A storm, however, strands the two on an island. Sick with pneumonia, the lieutenant is nursed back to health by his Red escort, and the two fall in love. At the last, however, Mariutka shoots him dead when he tries to escape, thus making him "the forty-first."
Sorok pervyy had been filmed as a silent, from the author’s own script, by Yakov Protazanov in 1927.

Aleksandr Sokurov - Dni Zatmenija AKA The Days Of Eclipse (1988)

Loosely based on a science fiction story by the Strugatsky brothers. The film tells the story about a young scientist who travels to a poor provincial town in Central Asia to do research on the Russian Orthodox church. Mysterious forces, unbearable heat, strange people, a conversation with a dead friend and aliens disturb his research.

Yakov Protazanov - Belyy oryol AKA The White Eagle (1928)

Synopsis:
Lash of the Czar was one of several English-language titles for the Russian film Belyi Orel. The film was based on The Governor, a play by Leonid Andreyev. V.I. Kachalov plays the governor of a small Russian province who tries to treat the people under his authority with kindness and equanimity. But when a local factory goes on strike, the governor buckles under to pressure from the Czar and orders the wholesale slaughter of the strikers. He pays for this betrayal of his trust with his life -- at the hands of a courageous Bolshevik spy. Anna Sten, who in 1934 was brought to the U.S. as Sam Goldwyn's "answer" to Greta Garbo, appears as the governor's wife. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Mikhail Kalatozov - Vikhri vrazhdebnye AKA The Hostile Whirlwinds (1953)

Description:
About the life and work of F.Dzerzhinsky in 1918-1921.

Larisa Shepitko - Rodina Electrichestva aka The Homeland of Electricity (1967)

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Shepitko graduated from VGIK, where she had studied in the workshop of Alexander Dovzhenko (whom she always referred to as her mentor) and Mikhail Romm in 1963. Her diploma work was Znoi / Heat (1963), made for Kirgizfilm from "The Camel's Eye", a story by the Kirgiz writer Chingiz Aitmatov, about a clash of generations in which a middle-aged woman, director of a civil engineering school, yearns for her days as a pilot during World War II and struggles to understand her daughter's generation. Shepitko's next project was the short film Rodina elektrichestva / Homeland of Electricity (1967), from the story by Andrei Platonov about the coming of electricity to a Russian village after the Revolution. Frequently compared to the work of her master Dovzhenko, this film, like Andrei Smirnov's Angel, was shot as part of a portmanteau film, Nachalo nevedomogo veka / The Beginning of an Unknown Century, made to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Revolution. But the films were banned for twenty years, and Rodina elektrichestva surfaced only in 1987, long after Shepitko's death.

Aleksandr Dovzhenko - Zemlya - versions of 1930 & 1971 (The Cultural Heritage [Disc 3]) (1930)

Earh (1930) 59 min.
Poetic cinema story about events related to collectivization in Ukraine at the end of 20th years of the last century, about creation of the first of a collective farm communes, about class enmity on a village.
The best film Dovzhenko and one of the best films in history world to the cinema.
A film "Earth" on the World exhibition in Brussels of 1958 was adopted among the twelve best films of all times and people as a result of questioning, conducted Belgian cinematic among 117 film critics andconnoisseurs of the films from 26 countries of the world. During many subsequent years "Earth" was multiple included in the various lists of the best films of the world of XX century.

Aleksandr Dovzhenko - Arsenal (The Cultural Heritage) [Disc 2] (1928)

In Arsenal, Alexander Dovzhenko, perhaps the most radical of the Soviet directors of the silent period, altered the already extended conventions of cinematic structure to a degree greater than had even the innovative Sergei Eisenstein in his bold October. The effect of this tinkering with the more or less accepted proprieties of motion picture construction produced a work that is actually less a film than it is a highly symbolic visual poem. For example, in a more linearly structured piece like October, the metaphors, allusions, and analogies that arise through the construction of the various montages replace rather than comment on essential actions within the film. In Arsenal, however, the symbolism is so purposely esoteric, with seemingly deliberate barriers established to block the viewer's perception, that the relationship of individual symbols or sequences to the various actions of the film is not immediately clear.