"Actor: Aleksandr Chistyakov"

• Storm Over Asia | DVD | (09/04/2001) from £4.98   |  Saving you £17.00 (568.56%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The last of the three great films that VI Pudovkin directed in the 1920s, Storm Over Asia (1928) is an acknowledged classic of Soviet silent cinema. Filmed largely on location in Mongolia, the film has an authentic documentary feel, though the story is a stirring melodrama, about a young fur trapper who is mistreated by the occupying forces in the civil war and becomes a leader of the partisans. Pudovkin enjoys caricaturing the foreign (British) troops and the medieval rituals of a Buddhist temple, but it's out on the steppes that he really comes into his own, with panoramic shots of the vast landscapes. Together with The Mother (1926) and The End of St Petersburg (1927), Storm Over Asia (also known as "The Heir to Genghis Khan") entitles Pudovkin to be ranked with Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov as a master of the Soviet montage style, which he expounded in his book Film Technique (1929). On the DVD: The print, though not perfect, is of fair quality and a new score by Timothy Brock complements the images nicely. However, the so-called "Introduction" turns out to be just a few lines of text scrolling down the screen, telling you less than the information appearing on the sleeve notes. --Ed Buscombe

• The End Of St. Petersburg | DVD | (20/08/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A deliberately symbolic propaganda film made to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the 1917 Russian Revolution. The storyline tells of a young boy who travels to St. Petersburg in search of work against the backdrop of the major historical events. Restored by film historian David Shephard.

• Outskirts | DVD | (12/11/2012) from £10.39   |  Saving you £7.60 (73.15%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Set on a small village on the Russo-German border, the war poisons the village community; close friendships are destroyed by vindictive nationalism, while a sweet romance between a Russian girl (Yelena Kuzmina, By the Bluest of Seas) and a German POW is greeted with suspicion and disapproval. On the front, soldiers face the absurdity of trench warfare, and at home returning veterans are unable to return to normal life; while intimations of the Russian Revolution makes themselves felt within the village. Made in 1933, Outskirts is one of the most ambitious films from the early sound period, ahead of its time with its camera movements and its use of sound, it is regarded as one of the greatest films of Russian cinema.