A two part documentary about the first five decades of Russian cinema: from its birth to 1953 - the death of Stalin and the first seedlings of the thaw. The film covers the most important milestones of cinema. Its introduction as a lowbrow entertainment, the impact of WWI and revolutions on the film process. The principal masters - Kuleshov, Vertov, Eisenstein - and their discoveries in film language at the turn of the 1920-30s. The arrival of sound. The evacuation of the Soviet film industry during WWII and the heroic work of the wartime documentary crews. Restricted film production and early signs of the thaw in the late 1940s - early 1950s. Film historians and art critics, directors and screenwriters put the history of cinema in a broader context, considering the path that the country took from Tsarist Russia to the totalitarian state under the rule of Stalin.

A History of Russian Cinema. The Birth of the Myth.

The film deals with intellectual activities which are usually hidden from the human eye. It concerns doing research in film archives, searching for missing films and bringing them back to life. It is a documentary about the work of Dziga Vertov, a prominent soviet director, and the restoration of the director’s original concept of the films Anniversary of the Revolution (1918), The History of the Civil War (1921), Man with a Movie Camera (1929).