Man with a Movie Camera is my favorite silent film, but Eisenstein’s stuff is great, too.

The Cranes are Flying is a top-notch tearjerker.

The Color of Pomegranates is another all-time favorite - stunningly beautiful, more of a poem than a film.

Andrei Rublev isn’t recommended as often as later Tarkovsky films but it’s my favorite of his. One of the few medieval movies that actually feels medieval (Marketa Lazarova, a Czech film from a few years later, is another).

I’ve heard great things about July Rain but haven’t seen it yet.

Here’s a funny Georgian film, Blue Mountains, that’s often claimed to be about “the crumbling Soviet system” . . . it’s not, it’s just a satire of bureaucracy.

“Arsenal” is amazing. it is about the 1918 Kiev Arsenal factory uprising

The main point of the film is showing how the Ukrainian People’s Republic and its declarations of a “Free Ukraine” mean nothing for the workers, peasants, wounded, veterans, widowed, women, elderly, etc. we cut to after the events suddenly with a nurse collecting the dead workers and asking a man who his letter should be sent to only for him to die before answering and her looking directly at the audience as she reads allowed the man’s repetition of another worker’s question to the “free” leaders earlier in the film: “can one kill bourgeoise and officers outdoors if one meets them?” with her answering “yes, you can” and we get a montage of the fight for the rest of the film. That gave me fucking chills.

Also the montage opens with workers taking a fallen comrade’s corpse back to his home as his last request “Served for four years, and in four wars. One year as a civil, brothers. Petliura wounded me by bullet and I feel my heroic death. Bury me at home for half-an hour. I have not seen it for nine years. Hurry up brothers, Arsenal is dying.” Which then kicks off an amazing rendition of one of my favorite Bolshevik songs, Tuchanka, which is about the battle for Ukraine

The constant statements by the main character as the nationalist government ask him to identify himself, expecting compliance or him to be happy with how things are since “you are a Ukrainian?” with him answering “I am a Ukrainian worker” to their dismay. Finally we have a montage that is haunting, of the remaining workers and Bolsheviks being executed one by one with some amazing editing, cutting to family asking questions like “where is the father? where is the son? where is the husband?” as we cut back to the executed men falling. Then “where is the metal workers? we have none” which goes on.

The idea is that Ukraine has achieved its “freedom” by destroying the people who actually make the country function, who form an actual community. All that remains are corpses, capitalists, petite-bourgeoise traitors, and nationalist militias. The last man left is our protagonist whose Maxim jams as the enemy encircle him and demand his name "which he simply responds “A Ukrainian worker. Shoot at me” which they do but miss or jam and accuse him of wearing a vest, so he takes his shirt off showing his bare chest and demands they shoot. And it ends with a closeup of his determined face.

The whole thing had me lamenting how Ukraine is back to another Petliura type government. Military and bourgeoise controlled, at the will of foreign imperialists, suppressing the workers. One of those little things that shows the continuity of history, one of the regions which sends a message to the UPR declaring they side with the Bolsheviks is of course Donbas.

https://archive.org/details/arsenal-eng-sub

Din-kza-kza was on YouTube when I saw it

A silly sci fi movie that is like a third of what George Lucas made star wars out of

Irony of Fate (1975), romantic comedy.

The courtship behavior is outdated and probably cringe by today’s standards, but it’s a Soviet/Russian cultural staple that plays on television every New Year’s Eve when families gather, so it’s one of the most well known films in the Soviet/Russian culture even to this day. Watch this on New Year’s Eve for maximum cultural immersion.

Solaris (1972), science fiction.

The Soviet response to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey! Even though the film was already planned before Kubrick’s was released, it conveniently and incidentally provided a counter-narrative to the American techno-centric view of the future and instead delved into the humanity aspect of a futuristic society.

White Sun of the Desert, a classic Soviet “western”

I must be very drunk, because I did not see anyone post Battleship Potemkin, the quintessential Soviet edutainment -movie. So yeah, that’s my suggestion.

Thanks for the thread, going straight to my bookmarks!

I really enjoyed July Rain (romance), Courier (coming of age), and I am Cuba (the story of the revolution)

The top two that one really needs to see in my humble opinion are “Man with a Movie Camera” by Dziga Vertov and “Battleship Potemkin” by Sergei Eisenstein. Both directors tried to find a filmic language that would serve the communist cause and both succeeded. You’ve never seen films like these before.

To The Stars By Hard Ways/Through The Brambles To The Stars (1981) features a global USSR, a telekinetic extraterrestrial woman searching for her origin, a Soviet sanitation ship and it’s brave crew saving another planet from capitalist-driven climate change and pollution, scientists in positions of authority being responsible, robots who are resigned to being confused a lot, and wonderful practical effects.

Circus was a fun bit of agitprop cinema that has the Stalin seal of approval.

I’ve also been meaning to get around to watching Two Soldiers

Pretty sure there’s a subbed Kin Dza Dza on YouTube.

The Mirror is really good, Tarkovskys work in general is.

I also love Man with a Movie Camera.

Ivan Vasilievich Changes Profession (Иван Васильевич меняет профессию) is a Soviet comic science fiction film directed by Leonid Gaidai in June 1973. It was one of the most attended films in the Soviet Union in 1973, with more than 60 million tickets sold. The story begins in 1973 Moscow, where engineer Aleksandr “Shurik” Timofeyev (Aleksandr Demyanenko) is working on a time machine in his apartment. By accident, he sends Ivan Vasilievich Bunsha (Yury Yakovlev), superintendent of his apartment building, and George Miloslavsky (Leonid Kuravlyov), a burglar, back into the time of Ivan IV “The Terrible”. The pair is forced to disguise themselves, with Bunsha dressing up as Ivan IV (tsar) and Miloslavsky as a knyaz (duke) of the same name. Find it on youtube

The Diamond Arm (Бриллиантовая рука) is a crime comedy film first released in 1969, directed by director Leonid Gaidai and starred several famous Soviet actors, including Yuri Nikulin, Andrei Mironov, Anatoli Papanov, Nonna Mordyukova and Svetlana Svetlichnaya. The Diamond Arm has become a Russian cult film and is considered by many Russian contemporaries to be one of the finest comedies of all time. It was also one of the all-time leaders at the Soviet box office with over 76,700,000 theatre admissions in the Soviet era. The plot of the film was based on a real-life news item about Swiss smugglers who tried to transport jewels in an orthopedic cast. Find it on youtube

The Most Charming and Attractive (Самая обаятельная и привлекательная) is a 1985 romantic comedy. Also on youtube

The Blonde Around the Corner (Блондинка за углом) is a 1984 romantic comedy about an astrophysicist who begins to work at a grocery store where he falls in love with a saleswoman. Various streaming links if you duckduckgo the title

Come and See is a 1985 Soviet anti-war film –https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Come_and_See

Aelita Queen of Mars is available free on archive.org

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films_in_the_Soviet_Union

I really need to get in to soviet cinema more i’ve read about a bunch of fun comedies but haven’t seen hardly any.

love and pigeons!! nice little romance movie i really like. it’s just a well made film with a lot of big name soviet actors. it also centers around the main character going on a state sponsored mandated vacation which is nice to think about in a capitalist dystopia.

Well, Stalker and Solaris. I’ve heard Hard to be a God is good but I havenkt seen it.