Margarita Barskaya

Working with children led Barskaya to create superb direct sound and an inspired style of shooting. Don’t look for conventional cinematic syntax here. The film is chaotic in the way that Soviet films still knew how to be, and Langlois couldn’t help but be seduced by its rebellious spirit, its anarchy and love of children, comparable to Vigo’s Zero de conduite. As well as being a film made with and for children, it offers a complex take on Western society. Pre-Nazi Germany is not named as such but is carefully reconstructed, possibly under advice from Karl Radek, and children offer a playful reflection of class struggle – doubly excluded, as proletarians and as minors. “They play in the same way that they live”, one intertitle says. The interaction between their comical games and the yet more ludicrous ones played by adults is developed on several levels.

While a factory director is distracted by production problems, his adolescent son suffers from loneliness. His mother is dead, and the father – a kind man and exemplary communist, winner of a Lenin Prize – is unable to find the time to educate his son, or a way to express his feelings. After an argument, the young boy runs away and, at his own risk, joins a band of criminals.

A detachment of Red Army soldiers gives shelter to a woman with a newborn. After the child is revealed to be a doll, the woman gets shot.

Jean, the hairdresser, is flabbergasted: what is that baby his girlfriend Lisa has put in his arms out of the blue? The fruit of love? Out of the question. From that moment on, the reluctant father has but one thought in his head: he must get rid of the cumbersome 'article'. And, take his word for it, all the ways are good.

Young Makvalla, who loves the cowman Onise, is married off to the unloved есаul Gela Goderdzishvili, who has become rich in the service of the bailiff. Onise decides to run away with Makvalla, and during a fight at Gela's house, he is seriously injured. Makvalla disappears from Gela's house. The fugitive is saved from death and taken in by the hermit shepherd Onfrey.

It's the 17th century, when social antagonism is at its peak. The poverty of peasants and poor Cossacks is opposed to the lavish lifestyle of the Ukrainian and Polish noblemen, priests, and Cossack officers. Cossacks fight off Tatars’ attacks, however, they start to realise that the real enemy is much closer. Taras Triasylo raises Cossacks to help the rebellious peasants.

After a lethargic dream, the general of the Tsarist army finds himself in Soviet Russia in 1927. Lost movie.

This film about agricultural advances in the USSR was meant to serve as a teaching aid. Featuring documentary footage and animation.