"Director: Alexander Dovzhenko"

• Dovzhenko: War Trilogy | DVD | (24/09/2012) from £20.00   |  Saving you £24.99 (124.95%)   |  RRP £44.99

  Titles Comprise:Zvenigora:Arsenal:Earth:

• Earth | DVD | (17/05/2010) from £11.59   |  Saving you £6.40 (55.22%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Dovzhenko's landmark 'film poem' style brings to life the collective experience of life for the Ukranian workers examining natural cycles through his epic montage. He explores life death violence sex and other issues as they relate to the collective farms. An idealistic vision of the possibilities of communism made just before Stalinism set in and the Kulack class was liquidated Earth was viewed negatively by many soviets because of its portrayal of death and other dark issues that come with revolution.

• Arsenal | DVD | (01/01/2014) from £17.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Director Alexander Dovzhenko the trailblazing icon of soviet cinema was originally commissioned to produce an epic film to celebrate the glories of the 1918 Bolshevik worker's revolution. Arsenal (1929) based on the real-life events of the Ukrainian Civil War turned out to be anything but an exercise in propaganda filmmaking. Set in the bleak aftermath and devastation of the 'Great War' (WWI) a recently de-mobbed soldier Timosh returns to his hometown Kiev after having survived a train wreck. His arrival coincides with a national celebration of Ukrainian freedom but the festivities are not to last as a disenchanted Timosh soon begins to clash with the city's authorities when he starts to agitate for the adoption of the soviet system. The unrest eventually comes to a violent head when outnumbered and holed-up in a munitions depot where he used to work Timosh and other Bolshevik troops defend their besieged city from the advancing nationalist White Army. Dovzhenko tempered his stark take on this pivotal war with touches of comedy and national myth while treating his portrayal of the passions evoked on both sides with a certain level of ambiguity which was to displease his partisan paymasters. Arsenal features some of the earliest usage of the fast-editing approach; which injects the film with a level of excitement new to movie-goers of the time. The director's unrivalled skills as a filmmaker were to remain unmatched for decades; and his use of vignettes grandiose imagery and intimate mood pieces set a template which continues to influence generations of moviemakers.

• Zvenigora | DVD | (14/02/2011) from £9.98   |  Saving you £8.01 (44.50%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Regarded as a silent revolutionary epic Dovzhenko's initial film in his Ukraine Trilogy (along with Arsenal and Earth) is almost religious in its tone and is one of the most remarkable avant-garde films of an exuberantly experimental period. The film wonderfully blends both lyricism and politics and uses its central construct to build a montage praising Ukrainian industrialisation attacking the European bourgeoisie celebrating the beauty of the Ukrainian steppe and re-telling ancient folklore. A grandfather fills the head of his grandson with stories of a legendary Scythian treasure and the boy spends the rest of his life trying to find it. The unique style is modernist in its approach and disregards the more traditional storytelling devices. The captivating dreamlike cinematography is reminiscent of Eisenstein Pudovkin Protazanov and Kuleshov yet Zvenigora is wholley unique to Dovzhenko.