Vladimir Gardin

Kastus Kalinovskiy - a feature film. Was released on August 14, 1928. The picture shows one of the heroes of the uprising of the Belarusian, Lithuanian and Polish people against forced Russification and the restoration of Poland's independence in 1863.

The Kreutzer Sonata is based on a novella by Leo Tolstoy, named after Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata. The work is an argument for the ideal of sexual abstinence and an in-depth first-person description of jealous rage. The main character, Pozdnyshev, relates the events leading up to his killing his wife.

Tsar Nicholas I is enamoured by Natalia, the wife of Alexander Pushkin. To cover his tracks, the tsar encourages the suit of Georges d'Anthès, a French officer, with the help of Count Alexander von Benckendorff. Pushkin hears rumours of D'Anthès's love for his wife and challenges him to a duel. The officer attempts to save his life by marrying Natalia's sister Ekaterina. Returning from his country estate, Pushkin receives anonymous letters and insists on a duel with D'Anthès.

Konstantin Eggert both directed and starred as Count Shemet, cursed by his insane mother's traumatic experience with a bear to have seizures during which he himself becomes a "bear" on the kill. Eggert's direction of the movie is as odd as the plot. The whole film is unsettling. The titles are too long; there are interminable shots of irrelevant action; the cutting is uneven. The heroine is unsuitably comic, spasmodically jumping around, smearing ink on her face, knocking things over.

The film takes place during the pre-revolutionary years and the initial period of the Soviet regime. At a monastery shelter in one of Russia's western towns, orphan Yulka gives birth to a son from the shepherd Jerome.

Russian State Insitute of Cinema (VGIK)

Set in an imaginary land where the threat of revolution spurs the Emperor to seek exile in one of the most distant parts of his realm. There he meets Elka, the daughter of a revolutionary who has been banished here due to his confrontational activities. The two fall in love but meet a violent end when the revolutionaries, led by Elka's father, destroy the palace.