A hymn to the human spirit, this screen adaptation from the novel by Nobel Prize winner Mikhail Sholokhov. After losing his wife and children during the war with fascist Germany and surviving the horrors of a concentration camp, Andrei Sokolov (played by the film's honored director, War and Peace's Sergei Bondarchuk) marches with the Soviet Army towards Berlin and finds a new destiny with a young orphaned boy. Winner of the Grand Prize at the 1959 Moscow IFF and Special Diploma at the 1970 Karlovy Vary IFF.

VAI DVD 4318. Moscow Chamber Orch/Orbelian. 2003 concert, Color, Stereo, 59 min.

Historical epic of the life and times of Ivan IV, 16th century ruler who first unified Russia. Ivan returns from retirement to fight the Boyars.
Genre: Foreign Film - Russian
Rating: UN
Release Date: 2-SEP-1998
Media Type: DVD

A landmark four disc Box Set - Unearthed from Moscow's legendary Soyuzmultfilm Studios, the 41 films in ANIMATED SOVIET PROPAGANDA span sixty years of Soviet history (1924 - 1984), and have never been available before in the U.S. The set is divided thematically into four discs, all dealing with different subjects of the Soviet propaganda machine. (DISC 1) AMERICAN IMPERIALISTS contains seven films, almost all of which are drawn from the Cold War era. The recurring image is of the money hungry industrialist self-destructing because of his greed. (DISC 2) FASCIST BARBARIANS is a 17 film reaction to the Nazi invasion of 1941. While Americans were mocked relentlessly, at least they remained human. After breaking the non-aggression pact and declaring war, the Nazis became animals in the propaganda films, turning into snarling warthogs and depraved vultures. (DISC 3) CAPITALIST SHARKS contains six films that take on the bourgeoisie the world over - and sometimes beyond. In INTERPLANTERY REVOLUTION (1924), capitalists escaping to Mars discover the revolution has spread throughout the galaxy. (DISC 4) ONWARD TO THE SHINING FUTURE: COMMUNISM contains 11 works, most of which mythologize the state and envision the inevitable utopias of the future. Dziga Vertov's SOVIET TOYS (1924), however, offers criticism of the state. Generally agreed to be the first Russian animated film, it satirizes the communist members who cashed in on Lenin's New Economic Policy (NEP), which introduced a limited form of capitalist enterprise. - Containing 6 hours of rare material in all, this four-disc DVD set offers a fascinating look at the history of Soviet propaganda. It is an invaluable resource that displays how one of the greatest and most reclusive powers wanted their people to envision the rest of the world, as well as being an idiosyncratic tour through Russia's rich and varied history of animated art. Russia 1924-1984 B&W and Color - 360min - Full Screen (1.33:1) - In Russian with English subtitles

Unforgettable music and songs highlight this beloved favorite of Russian cinema. The beautiful Larissa, daughter of an impoverished noblewoman, lives in a small town on the Volga River. She falls madly in love with Sergei, who returns her feelings as long as it serves his purposes. In fact he is secretly engaged to another girl, while Larissa is wooed by another man she despises. Romantic complications ensue which leave the lovers' destinies forever changed.

Winner of Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award, this classic brings all the passion and turbulence of Leo Tolstoy's epic masterpiece dramatically to the screen.

(If anything should happen to me, I beg you to show this tape to the whole world.) On November 23rd, 2006, these words, spoken on camera by exiled former KGB and FSB (post communist Russia s dreaded new secret police) agent Alexander Sasha Litvinenko, became a gruesome self-fulfilling prophecy. After an agonizingly painful ordeal, Litvinenko succumbed to radiation poisoning from a lethal dose of toxic Polonium-210, surreptitiously slipped into his tea during a London meeting with two FSB ex-colleagues three weeks earlier.

In Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko File (Formerly Known As REBELLION), filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov exposes the truth behind a crime that shocked the world and provoked a war of words between Russia and England that continues to this day. A (first-rate investigative documentary - NY Newsday) combining (an impressive array of film clips and extended interviews with Mr. Litvinenko - New York Times), Poisoned By Polonium: The Litvinenko File is both a nuanced documentary requiem for a friend and a searing personal indictment of Vladimir Putin s de facto dictatorship and Russia s hidden history of tyrannical secret police repression going all the way back to the Tsars.

DVD EXTRAS:

Recent interview with Marina Litvinenko and the co-author of her book on him, expert Alex Goldfarb. In English.

The documentary film DISBELIEF, directed by Andrei Nerkasov and based on
Litvinenko's book BLOWING UP RUSSIA. Premiered at Sundance 2004. In Russian with English subtitles.

14 min documentary, THE HERO OF OUR TIME, directed by Andrei Nekrasov. Its about the POLONIUM protagonist M. Trepashkin. In original Russian with English subtitles.