As part of our mini-tribute to Shepitko, we present Dovzhenko's two greatest achievements. Arsenal USSR 1929. The Ukrainian Alexander Dovzhenko stands, with Eisenstein and Pudovkin, as one of the giants of the Soviet silent era. A dazzling display of visual virtuosity whose vivid images linger long in memory . Dovzhenko's cinema is poetic, lyrical, possessed of a Blake-like somber innocence and a burning passion for existence . . .
Earth is a stirring symphony of pastoral life and the calm acceptance of death . . .
Dovzhenko loves his subject, making the camera the means for transmitting his emotion. Based on Siberian author Valentin Rasputin's Farewell to Matyora, the film is an elegiac, mystical, troubling account of modern and traditional societies in conflict, and of the environmental and social disruption that is too often the price of progress. One of the most important Soviet films of the decade. Colour, 35mm, in Russian with English subtitles.