Stride, Soviet!

Vítězný lid

January 1949 •Czech

Chernobyl 30 Years On: Nuclear Heritage

May 2015 •English

Thirty years after the Chernobyl disaster, which occurred on the night of April 26, 1986, its causes and consequences are examined. In addition, a report on efforts to strengthen the structures covering the core of the nuclear plant in order to better protect the population and the environment is offered.

Solidarność: How Solidarity Changed Europe

October 2019 •German

Gdańsk, Poland, September 1980. Lech Wałęsa and other Lenin shipyard workers found Solidarność (Solidarity), the first independent trade union behind the Iron Curtain. The long and hard battle to bring down communist dictatorship has begun.

Julius Fučík

February 1953 •Czech

Their Kingdom

July 1928 •Georgian

The documentary Their Kingdom, co-directed in 1928 by Nutsa Gogoberidze and Mikhail Kalatozishvili (Kalatozov) for Soviet Georgia’s Cinema Trust, was considered lost until 2008, when there appeared a possibility that this important film – Georgia’s first documentary feature and Kalatozov’s directorial debut – had not disappeared irretrievably.

Le Parti du cinéma

February 2021 •French

Enthusiasm. Symphony of Donbas

November 1930 •Russian

An audiovisual symphony that delves into the industrial, agrarian, and cultural fabric of the Donbas region during the inaugural Soviet Five Year Plan. It spotlights anti-religious campaigns, propagandistic marches, and the vibrant athletic culture of its time

Náš vzor

December 1950 •Czech

A film about the experiences that Czechoslovak peasants gained on a study trip to the Soviet Union.

The History of the Civil War

June 1921 •Russian

The epic story of the Russian Civil War (1918-21): the White Terror, the counterrevolutionary uprisings, the guerrilla war, the Kolchak front, the Wrangel front and the Kronstadt rebellion. Chaos and violence, devastation and death.

A Very Animated War

August 2021 •German

From 1945 to 1989, after the capitulation of Nazi Germany, two rival ideologies, communism and capitalism, faced each other in a merciless battle. On one side of the Iron Curtain and on the other, throughout the Cold War, the USSR and the United States sought to shape children’s imaginations through their magazines and films. Never in the history of mankind have so many comic books been published and so many cartoons produced for young people. In November 1989, communism collapsed with the Berlin Wall; capitalism was left to decide the future of the world. What if this victory had been prepared for a long time, and our thinking conditioned, from our early childhood, to ensure this absolute triumph?

Stalin: Man of Steel

January 2003 •English

Emmy Awards nominee for "Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Research: Multi-faceted portrait of the man who succeeded Lenin as the head of the Soviet Union. With a captivating blend of period documents, newly-released information, newsreel and archival footage and interviews with experts, the program examines his rise to power, deconstructs the cult of personality that helped him maintain an iron grip over his vast empire, and analyzes the policies he introduced, including the deadly expansion of the notorious gulags where he banished so many of his countrymen to certain death.

Albania

January 1945 •Albanian

Made by the highly influential Russian cameraman Roman Karmen, this documentary vividly features Albanian life immediately after the communists came to power in 1944. The film is especially memorable since it’s missing much of the heavy socialist realism that marked Albanian doc making. Shortly after he completed the film, Karmen set off for Berlin to shoot the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.

China: The Uighur Tragedy

February 2022 •French

A relentless chronicle of the tragedy of the Uighurs, an ethnic minority of some eleven million people who live in the Xinjiang region of northwest China, speak a Turkic language and practice the Muslim religion. The Uighurs suffer brutal cultural and political oppression by Xin Jinping's tyrannical government: torture, disappearances, forced labor, re-education of children and adults, mass sterilizations, extensive surveillance and destruction of historical heritage.

The Lovers and the Despot

September 2016 •English

Hong Kong, 1978. South Korean actress Choi Eun-hee is kidnapped by North Korean operatives following orders from dictator Kim Jong-il.

Under the Sun

October 2015 •German

Over the course of one year, this film follows the life of an ordinary Pyongyang family whose daughter was chosen to take part in Day of the Shining Star (Kim Jong-il's birthday) celebration. While North Korean government wanted a propaganda film, the director kept on filming between the scripted scenes. The ritualized explosions of color and joy contrast sharply with pale everyday reality, which is not particularly terrible, but rather quite surreal.

It’s Not Always Cloudy

October 1950 •Czech

A film about life in the Czech borderlands after the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans.

Anniversary of the Revolution

November 1918 •Russian

A chronicle of the Russian Revolution of 1917, from the bourgeois democratic February Revolution to the great socialist October Revolution and the final triumph.

Atentát na kulturu

January 1977 •Czech

Propaganda

February 2013 •English

An anti-western propaganda film about the influences of American visual and consumption culture on the rest of the world, as told from a North Korean perspective.

The Eleventh Year

May 1928 •Russian

The film is dedicated to the achievements of the Ukrainian SSR for the eleventh anniversary of the October Revolution.