Aleksandr Medvedkin - Noch Nad Kitaem AKA Night Over China (1971)

Description: Soviet documentary "defending the Chinese people from their enemies, the Maoists". NB: The film clearly documents the activities of the Red Guards although it never mentions them by name. This has been reflected in the cataloguing. Also, 'Peking' has been used instead of 'Beijing', again to reflect the content of the film.

Yuri Ilyenko - Bilyy ptakh z chornoyu vidznakoyu AKA The White Bird Marked with Black (1971)

Quote:
Colourful 'optimistic tragedy' of a poor family in Ukraine, living in the Carpathian mountains near the Romanian border, during the Second World War. Five sons of the family make up the village band, but as the battles between the Nazi-supported Ukranian nationalists and the Soviets go on, their band loses one player after another.

Winner of the Grand prize at the 1971 Moscow Film Festival, White Bird with a Black Mark is set in western Ukraine, in an area that has passed through the control of several nations over the centuries. despairing at the poverty of is family, a boy decides the stork is the cause of all their problems, and sets out to kill it. But soon everyone's situation will be challenged, as World War II breaks out and the region is carved into warring battle zones, with brother being forced to fight against brother. Yuri Illienko once again brings his dazzling poetic vision to this tale of loyalty to family, to nation, to state—and to oneself. The film is widely considered one of the most important works of the Ukrainian film heritage.

Darezhan Omirbayev - Jol AKA The Road (2001)

A filmmaker arrives at a crossroads in his life and his art when he learns his mother may be dying in this drama with comedic overtones from director Darezhan Omirbaev. Amir Kobessov (Djamshed Usmonov) is a well-respected filmmaker from Kazakhstan who, both professionally and personally, is suffering from a crisis of confidence. Amir is beginning to wonder if audiences are still interested in his work, and he has a recurring nightmare in which his latest premiere is scotched in favor of a low-budget chop-socky epic. At home, Amir and his wife are not getting along, and both are struggling to keep their marriage afloat. When Amir receives word that his mother is seriously ill, he hops in his car and sets out to visit her in the small village where he was born; along the way, Amir finds himself examining his past as he tries to come to terms with an uncertain future. Jol was screened as part of the Un Certain Regard series at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival.
~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Denis Trofimov - Sacrifices of Andrei Tarkovsky (2012)

Dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the director. The film uses unique materials related to the years Tarkovsky spent in Italy: Florence, where he lived, and where his museum now exists, at a place called Banja Vignoni, where "Nostalgia" was filmed in the house of the Italian screenwriter Tonino Guerra.

The film will include rare unique images: young Tarkovsky on the set, fragments of the documentary "Time of travel", which was filmed in Italy by Andrei Tarkovsky with Tonino Guerra. For the first time viewers will see the location of filming of "Stalker" in Estonia...

Viktor Kosakovsky - Sreda AKA Wednesday (1997)

Quote:
Wednesday, July 19, 1961: it’s summertime and the newspapers are full of the usual articles. The world is comfortably embedded in the Cold War. An average day in Leningrad. 51 girls and 50 boys are born in Leningrad on this day.
One of them is Victor Kossakovsky. Why here and not somewhere else? Why then and not another time? These questions are the starting point for his film. Could it be that this child was mistaken for another in hospital? Who are all the people who began their lives on that same day? Do they somehow share the same fate or are they merely contemporaries?

Konstantin Lopushansky - Gadkie lebedi aka The Ugly Swans (2006)

Based on the novel of the same title by the Strugatsky brothers

"Konstantin Lopushansky was a student of classic Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky, and master's influence is highly visible in "The Ugly Swans" -- not just as a ghost in the background, but as full-fledged foreground presence. Which is not to deny Lopushansky his originality. More than anything, it's a sign of a certain artistic style being handed down over the generations... The film is ...aesthetically outstanding and emotionally moody in a way that's very hard to gauge... Tarkovsky would have been proud." (Tom Birchenough, "The Moscow Times")

Don Askarian - Avetik (1992)

"Avetik" is very much in tradition of the cinema of dreams. A gorgeous and mesmerizing film, "Avetik" both thrills the eye and boggles the mind. It takes you on a journey of the mind that leads to heaven or hell - a succulent garden full of bare-breasted goddesses or a frozen step of devastation and death". "Askarian is capable of producing images that are unlike anything ever seen before, yet hit you with a primal immediacy".Hovering between the realms of poetry and history, this stunningly photographed, elegiac work-hot mostly in long takes-mixes cryptic metaphor and fantastic symbolism to tell the story of Avetik, an Armenian filmmaker exiled in Berlin. Director Askarian employs dreamlike images-a crumbling, ancient stone chapel gradually reduced to nothing by the rumbling vibrations of passing military vehicles; a ghostly cemetery of carved tombstones in which a woman takes a starving sheep in her arm and breast-feeds it back to life-to reflect the history of his homeland and shades of his own exile in Germany. In sensuous, lyric tableaux, Askarian explores German racism, the 1915 Armenian genocide, the disastrous earthquake of 1989, tranquil childhood memories, and images inspired by erotic medieval poetry.

Oleg Bondarev - Machekha AKA The Stepmother (1973)

Based on a story by Mariya Khalfina. Shura Olevantseva leads a happy life with her children and her loving husband Pavel. One day she hears the news that the woman, who once loved her husband, died and that Sveta, Pavel's daughter about whom he knew nothing, is now an orphan. It wasn't easy for Shura to welcome Sveta into her home. It was even more difficult to win her heart, and to give her back the joy of childhood and the belief that she's not alone. Written by russart.com