Nikolai Izvolov

The Return of Vertov

The film deals with intellectual activities which are usually hidden from the human eye. It concerns doing research in film archives, searching for missing films and bringing them back to life. It is a documentary about the work of Dziga Vertov, a prominent soviet director, and the restoration of the director’s original concept of the films Anniversary of the Revolution (1918), The History of the Civil War (1921), Man with a Movie Camera (1929).

A History of Russian Cinema. The Birth of the Myth.

A two part documentary about the first five decades of Russian cinema: from its birth to 1953 - the death of Stalin and the first seedlings of the thaw. The film covers the most important milestones of cinema. Its introduction as a lowbrow entertainment, the impact of WWI and revolutions on the film process. The principal masters - Kuleshov, Vertov, Eisenstein - and their discoveries in film language at the turn of the 1920-30s. The arrival of sound. The evacuation of the Soviet film industry during WWII and the heroic work of the wartime documentary crews. Restricted film production and early signs of the thaw in the late 1940s - early 1950s. Film historians and art critics, directors and screenwriters put the history of cinema in a broader context, considering the path that the country took from Tsarist Russia to the totalitarian state under the rule of Stalin.

Searching for the Lost Pochta

Travelogue of two film historians Nikolay Izvolov and Sergey Kapterev who visit world film archives around the globe in search of a lost sound version of one famous Soviet cartoon. It's "The Post" made by Mikhail Tsekhanovsky in 1929 and based on a poem by Samuil Marshak. At first "The Post" has been released in a silent form and later Tsekhanovsky remade it with experimental music and narration by Daniil Kharms. At that moment it was the first Soviet sound cartoon and it was a success all over the world. Russian film studies consider "The Post" to be of great importance and artistic value but unfortunately it's still lost. Only the silent version and the 1964 remake are still known and available.

The Bug Trainer

The Bug Trainer explores Starewitch’s creative ideas and concepts of his work, along with opinions from film critics and other animation directors to help us understand why he is considered one of the greatest creators of the animation world.

The Last Bolshevik

A documentary on Soviet filmmaker Aleksandr Medvedkin, examining his tumultuous career, the rediscovery of his masterpiece Happiness, and Russia's struggles over the course of the 20th Century.

Anna Karamazoff

This film is of interest primarily because it contains within it the entire surviving footage of an unfinished 1974 film by the same director, Slave of Love, which was successfully remade shortly thereafter by another director, Nikita Mikhalkov.The "cover" story is about a woman (Jeanne Moreau) newly released from prison camps in the 1940s back into Russian society, who finds that there is no place for her in the world she has come back to. However, this painterly film is so filled with striking and surreal imagery that it would be misleading to say that the story is of any great importance in relation to that.