Two poor little Chinese children looking for the land of freedom travel across oceans and foreign continents but don’t find it. Finally they come to a Soviet pioneer camp and are received with cheers, flag salutes and lock step marches. One of the studio’s first puppet animations.
– Günter Agde

A look back at the events of 1968 in Prague from a contemporary Soviet standpoint. Using international archive and newsreel footage, the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops is construed as a consequence of the Cold War.

Stefan Gööck

A different, new life: director Zhelyabuzhsky depicts modern Baku as the programmatic “boomtown” of the East. Azerbaijan’s oil-based wealth, which had flowed off abroad before, fell into the hands of the Soviet Union after the Revolution. Ten years later this anniversary film for the state-run oil company sets out to show that progress is made not only in Moscow. Oil derricks rise next to towers and minarets, down below runs the first electric tram of the Soviet empire. The film proudly presents all this new technology, but also literacy classes for women, the training of engineers, new housing estates, nurseries, seaside resorts and holiday processions. Then as now Baku is presented as the “Pearl of the Black Sea”.
– Alexander Schwarz

Musikbegleitung: Pelikorn
Phillip Frischkorn - Piano
Jakob Petzl - Bass
Clemens Litschko - drums
(http://pelikorn.jimdo.com/)

The men and women had hardly got a grip on the technology of their flying machines and fearlessly made the first long-distance flights, when civilian aviation emerged in the Soviet Union. The film shows examples of what was possible years before Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic: a scheduled flight from Moscow to Berlin in a Junkers plane owned by the German-Russian Deruluft airline, complete with passengers and airmail; a plane racing a camel train to Kabul; fighting a plague of locusts from the air, seal hunting off Murmansk, and fishermen being rescued from the air.
– Alexander Schwarz

Vladimir Shneiderov was the recognised adventure film expert at Mezhrabpom-Film. He was on board the record flight from Moscow to Tokyo and had successfully filmed the exploration of the uncharted Pamir summit and glacier in 1928, when the studio and its German subsidiary Prometheus started to look for another blank spot on the map. This time the journey took him into the boiling heat of Yemen. Never before had a film camera been seen in that country. Russian and German spectators were amazed at the rare images of slaves working for coffee traders, archaic fishing, fascinating buildings, a Jewish enclave, feudalism, tribes and rituals. Soon afterwards, Shneiderov was to find himself back in perpetual ice.
– Alexander Schwarz

Musikbegleitung: Südwind
Tilo Augsten, piano
Frank Liebscher, sax
Joseph Augusten, percusssion

A memorial and hymn on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of Lenin’s death, full of images of life in the Soviet Union. The avant-garde filmmaker Vertov uses newsreel material and new footage, omitting none of the achievements of socialism of the time: electrification, popular education, sport. His adoration of Lenin is unbroken. The film had a chequered history and was re-edited several times as various Soviet party leaders demanded massive changes for political reasons. Nonetheless, if one looks beyond the superficial pathos at the depths of the images and pays attention to the contrasts, one can find a lot of authentic images of life in the Soviet Union then.
– Günter Agde

The film needs only a few delicate lines to visualise gliding joyfully on an ice rink, and the unrestrained enjoyment of moving fast – the elegant line as a stick figure. One of the studio’s earliest animated films.
– Günter Agde

“From this whole nature with its inward birth I have studied and learned my philosophy, astrology and theology, and not from or through man.” Jakob Böhme

In this masterpiece of Russian animation, a hedgehog makes a beautiful journey to nature. The hedgehog appears like an icon, like a light in the night. The Russian-Orthodox Church was influenced by Böhme as early as the 18th century.

Mait Laas

Herbert Hoover’s programme to relieve the poverty following WWI, the American Relief Administration, functioned quickly and efficiently at the Volga, too. Cameras accompanied the American administrators – visual evidence was needed to boost donations. They have no qualms about appealing to the emotions, showing corpses, starving children, bleak fields. Then sacks of grain and aid convoys enter the picture and the children beam with joy.
– Alexander Schwarz

Germany starves once more. Soon after WWI, disaster looms again: rapid currency devaluation, queues for a loaf of bread, slums. Crowds of people gather to protest; WIR campaigns originally intended for the Soviet Union are launched in Germany now. Statistics and animations explain the causes and extent of the misery. Workers’ councils meet in Dresden, followed by demonstrations of the Black Hundreds against Fascism. Willi Münzenberg is able to look back with pride upon the achievements at the IAH world congress in Berlin in 1923. This programmatic German-Russian co-production was believed lost until a Russian version was discovered in the Krasnogorsk archive.
– Alexander Schwarz

As early as August 1921, the experienced cinematographer and director Yuri Zhelyabuzhsky was filming in the famine-stricken region along the Volga. Commissioned by the Comintern, the film shows the work done by its Russian Famine Aid Committee and polar explorer Fridjof Nansen, who received the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian efforts in 1921. In Germany, the film was distributed by the recently founded “Filmamt der Internationalen Arbeiterhilfe” (IAH Film Office): screened at more than 200 workers’ meetings under the title “Hunger in Sowjetrussland” (Hunger in Soviet Russia), it triggered a wave of support.
– Alexander Schwarz

Documentary scenes from the home countries of modern capitalism, especially the United States, are juxtaposed with scenes of a thriving Soviet Union. The film suggests that capitalism is threatening the Soviet Union. The juxtaposition signals that the Soviet Union is ready for any fight. A fast-paced comparison film that is both belligerent pamphlet and hymn.
– Günter Agde

Musikbegleitung: Improvisationsklasse der HfMT
Annamaria Schwarzer - Klavier
Peter Gotterbarm - Schlagzeug
Phillip Sommer - Viola

Out of the spirit of a wooden doll, mixed animation is born. A wood carver in a Moscow toy museum shows a group of children how he works: he carves a Punch doll from a piece of wood which comes alive and amuses the children with various pranks. The film’s special charm lies in its elegant combination of real life and fairytale scenes.
– Günter Agde

The Russian Soviet Republic RSFSR shows that Nansen and the American Relief Administration are not the only ones to fight the famine. A state-run Russian medical train is travelling through Bashkiria and Tatarstan in 1922 to bring relief to starving children. Shortly afterwards the German-Russian Workers’ International Relief takes over. They also see to it that such images are brought to the awareness of the West.
– Alexander Schwarz

The ancient tale of the boy who is afraid of water in a version adapted to the Soviet life of the time. The fight between a boy who doesn’t want to wash and a washstand with human traits is amusing and brimming with effects. The washstand gets on the boy’s nerves until the recalcitrant child has washed himself completely. This puppet animation is based on a popular children’s poem by Konstantin Chukovsky which was to be adapted on film several times.
– Günter Agde

The adventures of Baron Munchhausen provided an excellent model for this animated cartoon: the noble seigneur’s tall tales of pursuits, rides through the air and dangerous encounters with wild animals and their surprising twists form a fantastic template for the drawing skills and visual elegance of the Mezhrabpom-Film animation department.
– Günter Agde