Dziga Vertov - Kinoglaz AKA Kino-eye (1924)

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Dziga Vertov, whose renegade approach to cinema is best remembered in the legendary Man With a Movie Camera and his series of Kino-Pravda newsreels, demonstrates his mastery of montage in this 1924 feature previously unseen in the U.S.

An outspoken critic of the purely plot-driven motion picture, Vertov challenged other filmmakers to rebel against the Western story-oriented cinema. Vertov argued that filmmakers should use their camera to capture "the chaos of visual phenomena filling the universe" and through clever editing, develop these random images into a more honest, more genuine record of the Soviet experience.

Dziga Vertov - Kino-pravda no. 13 (1922)

Kino-Pravda (“Film Truth”) was a newsreel series by Dziga Vertov, Elizaveta Svilova, and Mikhail Kaufman.

Working mainly during the 1920s, Vertov promoted the concept of kino-pravda, or film-truth, through his newsreel series. His driving vision was to capture fragments of actuality which, when organized together, showed a deeper truth which could not be seen with the naked eye. In the “Kino-Pravda” series, Vertov focused on everyday experiences, eschewing bourgeois concerns and filming marketplaces, bars, and schools instead, sometimes with a hidden camera, without asking permission first.

Yuri Zhelyabuzhsky - Papirosnitsa ot Mosselproma aka The cigarette girl of Mosselprom [+Extras] (1924)

Review
Though many casual film fans are of the opinion that the Russian silent cinema began and ended with Montage and Propaganda, several charming romantic comedies and dramas emanated from the Soviet film industry of the 1920s. The Cigarette Girl of Mosselprom tells the tale of a young man who falls in love with the title character (Yulia Solnsteva). She becomes a famous film star, and herself falls in love--not with the hero, but with her cameraman. No one ever gets what he or she truly wants in the story, though they continue to pursue their lost dreams to the bitter end. Revelling in The Unexpected throughout, Cigarette Girl of Mosselprom is capped by an adroit surprise ending. (Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide)

Various - Kino-nedelya 31-35 AKA Kino-Week 31-35 (1919)

Kino-nedelya was directed by Dziga Vertov, Vladimir Gardin, Lev Kuleshov and others

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In 1918 Mikhail Koltstov, who headed the Moscow Film Committee's newsreel section, hired Vertov as his assistant. Among Vertov's colleagues was Lev Kuleshov, who was conducting his now legendary experiments in montage, as well as Edouard Tissé, Eisenstein's future cameraman was Lev Kuleshov, who was conducting his now legendary experiments in montage, as well as Edouard Tissé, Eisenstein's future cameraman. Vertov began to edit documentary footage and soon was appointed editor of
Kinonedelya, the first Soviet weekly newsreel

Mikhail Kalatozov - Jim Shvante (marili svanets) aka Salt For Svanetia (1930)

by ramencity (Portland, Oregon)

Many visually stunning scenes--it's the superior of Turksib, which is on the same video release. Incidentally, Svanetia is not part of the Ukraine, but is in the northwest of the Georgian Republic, in the Caucasus, not the Carpathian, mountains. This area is still very remote. The Svan language is distantly related to Georgian; there are only a few thousand speakers left.

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

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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.