Leningrad Documentary Film Studio

Film from the Leningrad Documentary Film Studio.

The life and work of the great Russian composer Dmitriy Shostakovich is presented in this documentary through rare images and audios from many archives, at one time censored by the Soviet government. A brief take on his life, from his transition as an early prodigy to a first rate artist, his celebrated compositions and the final years with a declining health.

Alisa Freyndlikh in a rush — there isn't a single calm, free minute. Rehearsals, discussions of roles with Igor Vladimirov, her daughter Varya's birthday, daytime and evening performances, meetings with the audience...

Documentary — featuring both interviews and live footage — about underground rock music in Russia, during the last years of the Perestroika.

A 1988 documentary film directed by Alexander Sokurov, about the later life and death of Soviet Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. The film was originally intended to mark the 50th birthday of Tarkovsky in 1982, which would have been before his death. Controversy with Soviet authorities about the film's style and content led to significant delays in the production.

The film is based on the concert of "Pop Mechanics" under the direction of Sergey Kuryokhin.

The film Our Friend Maxim is devoted to the life and work of actor and National Artist of the USSR Boris Petrovich Chirkov. This film includes excerpts from his Maxim trilogy, and significant focus is placed on Chirkov’s role as a pedagogue and mentor to young actors.

A chronicle of the beginning of the century, images and people, are shown while Boris Grebenshchikov performs Vertinsky's romances.

The film observes and records the people travelling, adding to this very simple but effective visual set a pure (and magic) pot pourri of designed and recorded voices and sounds. Hereby not only the people become human beings alive, but also the city awakens.

Produced by the Soviet Union to justify its 1939-40 Winter War campaign in Finland, this outstanding documentary---more than any other such cinematic record---visually depicts the much vaunted Mannerheim Line in all its actual emplacements, as seen but two weeks after their capture, and as filmed by Red Army combat photographers onsite, directed by Vasili Belayev.

A requiem for a Russian peasant woman, Maria Semionovna Voinova. The film is in two chapters. The first chapter consists of an impression of Maria Semionovna, scenes of the colours of summer time: hay–making, bathing in a river, work in the flax fields and a holiday in the Crimea. The second chapter, set nine years later, is in black and white and deals with how Maria Semionovna's life ended. The mood is one of a sad and elegiac narration.

Frustration of the German attempt to capture Leningrad, 1941, the besieging of the city.

The film is based on three events in February 1987: the release of the film "Repentance", an exhibition-competition in the Manege of projects for the Victory Monument on Poklonnaya Gora and the 150th anniversary of the death of Alexander Pushkin.

The whole world knows the immortal feat of the residents of besieged Leningrad, accomplished during the Great Patriotic War. The tragic story of the blockade, which lasted for nine hundred days and ended with the defeat of the fascists at the gates of the unconquered city, will forever remain in the history of humanity as the most vivid example of courage and patriotism.

The film tells about the heroic struggle of the Leningraders during the siege, about the defenders of Leningrad, and about various aspects of life in the city today.

A documentary on the staging of Georgi Tovstonogov's acclaimed production of The Three Sisters at the Gorky Bolshoi Drama Theater, from the first table read to the opening night.

About Ivan Selivanov - an artist, a representative of "naive art" from the Kuzbass. Director Mikhail Litvyakov met Ivan Selivanov in 1968. Since then, until the artist's death in 1988, their correspondence continued. The film uses letters, diaries, pictures of the artist, shooting different years.

The following guests take part in the music concert-documentary: Rosa Rymbaeva, Dmitry Pokrovsky folklore Ensemble, Elena Kamburova, Alla Pugacheva, Bulat Okudzhava and the Nergebi children's vocal ensemble from Georgia.

The picture is about the anti-Hitler coalition of the USSR, England and America, which developed as a counterweight to the aggressive policy of Nazi Germany during the Second World War. The unique newsreel footage of these years, shot by operators of different warring countries, is connected with today's thoughts of the author about the fate of the post-war world, about the humanitarian losses of both sides and about gaining unstable hopes for the unity of the world in countering evil.