Socialist films
Socialist films that were created under real-existing socialism mostly as propaganda-works or sometimes as critical reflections upon socialist thought or certain parts of socialist thought.
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- DirectorSergei EisensteinStarsAleksandr AntonovVladimir BarskiyGrigoriy AleksandrovIn the midst of the Russian Revolution of 1905, the crew of the battleship Potemkin mutiny against the brutal, tyrannical regime of the vessel's officers. The resulting street demonstration in Odessa brings on a police massacre.
- DirectorRichard GroschoppStarsHans WehrlLotte LoebingerIrene Korb
- DirectorKurt MaetzigStarsGünther SimonHans-Peter MinettiErich FranzThis historical-biographical film begins in the first days of November 1918 on the western front. News comes to the soldiers of a revolutionary uprising in Kiel. Young Thälmann, a soldier against his will, would like to join the expanding conflict on the side of his comrades in Hamburg. As the revolution becomes threatened by the betrayal of the right-wing Social Democrats and the splintering of the working class, he nevertheless tries unremittingly to unite the workers. The reactionaries grow ever stronger and the neediness of ordinary people multiplies. In this dire situation, the Hamburg police commissioner would like to block the unloading of a ship full of provisions that were sent from Petrograd as a message of solidarity. But Thälmann prevails in unloading it. The high point and conclusion of the first part of the Thälmann films is established at the Hamburg Uprising in October 1923.
- DirectorMikhail RommDmitriy VasilevStarsBoris ShchukinNikolai OkhlopkovVasili VaninThe movie about events of October revolution of 1917 and Lenin's role in the organization of revolt of Bolsheviks.
- DirectorGrigoriy AleksandrovSergei EisensteinStarsBoris LivanovNikolay PopovVasili NikandrovA large-scale view on the events of 1917 in Russia, when the monarchy was overthrown.
- DirectorVsevolod PudovkinMikhail DollerStarsAleksandr ChistyakovVera BaranovskayaIvan ChuvelyovA peasant comes to St. Petersburg to find work. He unwittingly helps in the arrest of an old friend who is now a labor leader. The unemployed man is arrested and sent to fight in World War I. After three years, he returns to rebel.
- DirectorMikhail KalatozovStarsSergio CorrieriSalvador WoodJosé GallardoFour vignettes about the lives of the Cuban people set during the pre-revolutionary era.
- DirectorDziga Vertov
- DirectorSergei YutkevichStarsNikolay KolesnikovMikheil GelovaniVasiliy MarkovSoviet history propagandistic film.
- DirectorSergei YutkevichStarsMaksim ShtraukhMikheil GelovaniBoris TeninA propaganda comedy that tells the story of the Bolshevik revolution through the eyes of an ignorant and easy-going peasant who, as a soldier, gets caught up in the proceedings. He does manage to make the Stalin and Lenin characters look like just a pair of good old boys when they laugh as he tells them he allowed a White general to escape because he was awed by the uniform.
- DirectorVsevolod PudovkinStarsVera BaranovskayaNikolay BatalovAleksandr ChistyakovA story about a family torn apart by a worker's strike. At first, the mother wants to protect her family from the troublemakers, but eventually she realizes that her son is right and the workers should strike.
- DirectorDziga Vertov"Sixth Part of the World" was the size of Soviet Union of the time. Many peoples of many customs composed it. Ice and desert, forest and ocean. Bread, furs, machines. All and every is a part of great unity.
- DirectorVsevolod PudovkinStarsI. InkizhinovI. DedintsevValéry InkijinoffAfter a run-in with the law, a Mongolian man becomes a fugitive and joins the Russian Civil War.
- DirectorSergei EisensteinStarsGrigoriy AleksandrovMaksim ShtraukhMikhail GomorovA group of oppressed factory workers go on strike in pre-revolutionary Russia.
- DirectorMikheil ChiaureliStarsPavel MolchanovMikheil GelovaniBoris AndreyevDuring the Russian Civil War, the Reds and the Whites clashed over possession of the former capital.
- DirectorKurt MaetzigStarsGünther SimonHans-Peter MinettiKarla RunkehlThe second part of the Ernst Thälmann films encompasses the time period between 1930 and Thälmann's murder in 1944. It shows Thälmann's battle to achieve a united front with all German workers against the National Socialists, his arrest following Hitler's seizure of power and the eleven years of his incarceration, in which he is unwavering in his beliefs until his death. An attempt to free him on the part of his comrades ends disastrously, and a corrupt offer of freedom from Göring himself receives Thälmann's refusal. He must also witness how his brave fellow Socialist Aenne Jansen in the women's prison across from his tragically loses her life during a bombing raid. The second primary character of the film is Aenne's husband Fiete Jansen, who already proved his loyalty to Thälmann's side as a friend and fighter in the first part. As the commander of the Thälmann Battalion, he fights in Spain on the side of the people and later in the ranks of the Red Army toward a speedy end to the war against Fascism.
- DirectorKurt MaetzigStarsPaul KlingerIlse SteppatAlfred BalthoffIn Nazi Germany actor Hans refuses to divorce his Jewish wife Elisabeth. He is threatened to be drafted and sent to the front while she will be deported to a concentration camp. Desperate, Hans decides that suicide is their only way out.
- DirectorWolfgang StaudteStarsWerner PetersPaul EsserRenate FischerDiederich Heßling is scared of everything and everyone. But as he grows up, he comes to realize that he has to offer his services to the powers-that-be if he wants to wield power himself. His life motto now runs: bow to those at the top and tread on those below. In this way, he always succeeds: as a student in a duel-fighting student fraternity and as a businessman in a paper factory. He cajoles the obese district administrative president Von Wulkow and wins his favor. He slanders his financial rivals and hatches a plot with the social democrats in the town council. On his honeymoon with his rich wife Guste, he finally finds a chance to do his beloved Kaiser a favor. And when a memorial to the Kaiser is unveiled in the town where Diederich lives and works, he delivers the address. He stands behind the lectern in the pouring rain, saluting his Kaiser. The crowd is dispersed. Everything is laid in ruins...
- DirectorKonrad WolfStarsRenate BlumeEberhard EscheHans Hardt-HardtloffIn 1961, Rita returns to her childhood village after a breakdown. As she recovers, she remembers the past two years: her love for chemist Manfred, 10 years her senior; his enthusiasm about his new chemical process, which turned to bitter disappointment in the face of rejection; his escape to West Berlin a few weeks before the Wall was built; and his hope that she would follow him. This East German classic, praised by critics as one of Germany's 100 Most Important Films, is based on Christa Wolf's internationally-known novel, criticized in the GDR for questioning the construction of the Wall. Produced during a brief cultural thaw in the early 1960s, this film was strongly influenced by French Nouvelle Vague cinema.
- DirectorGünter ReischStarsHorst SchulzeLyudmila KasyanovaRita KripsThe biography of the German socialistic politician Karl Liebknecht and his fight against World War I.
- DirectorGünter ReischStarsHorst SchulzeLyudmila KasyanovaUte IllmannBiographical war drama about the life of German socialist Karl Liebknecht.
- DirectorGünter ReischLucia OchrimenkoStarsGottfried RichterMikhail UlyanovHelmut HabelA young Communist is entrusted with an important secret mission to the leader of the new Bolshevik Revolution in Moscow in 1919.
- DirectorWerner KlinglerStarsPaul BildtElly BurgmerAgathe PoschmannHauptkommissar/Chief Inspector Friedrich Naumann - played by old pro Paul Bildt, veteran actor of over 180 movies - operating in a Berlin still reeling from the immediate devastation WWII caused on all levels, attempts to break the most ruthless gang's grip upon the black market which is a necessary evil in this zero hour and brings the worst and the innocent into the same cauldron. Naumann targets the Club "Ali Baba" to strike a blow at its owner Goll (Harry Frank), the black market's kingpin, but one of Naumann's own men, Becker, is an informer blackmailed by Goll to keep him one step ahead of the law's movements. After the unsuccessful raid and the "official" closing of the file Naumann continues his investigations by himself, but as he gets too close to busting all up by finding evidences of irrefutable nature he is murdered. Not long and another Naumann enters the scene: Friedrich's PoW returned son Paul begins working as Goll's driver in the drug pusher gang. The different connections between gang leader/club owner Goll, sidekick and employee Yvonne (Nina Kosta), informant Heinz Becker (the blackmailed workmate of murdered Chief Inspector Naumann) and son Paul Naumann (approaching the moment he understands Goll brought about his father's death) provide tense levels of interaction. The police won't let it rest after Friedrich Naumann's murder and make a second attempt to raid the Ali Baba Club without Goll being tipped off this time and the police take him down with the gang.
- DirectorPeter PewasStarsGisela TroweAlice TreffUrsula VoßErika is 20 lives with her strict parents in a post-war apartment, works as a tiller in a laundry and is always hungry. In her friend Else, she sees how she should do it: Else has caught an older man who provides her with new stockings
- DirectorKurt MaetzigStarsPaul BildtFritz TillmannWilly A. KleinauBased on the 1947 book "I.G. Farben", by American author Richard Sasuly, and records from the Nuremberg Trial of the chemical giant I.G. Farben, Council of the Gods is a story about the collaboration between international corporations and German scientists, whose research contributed to the death of millions. Featuring music by Hanns Eisler, electronic sound by Oskar Sala (Hitchcocks's "The Birds") and a script by Friedrich Wolf, the film is powerful in its depiction of the moral dilemmas and lessons of the war, as well as of Cold War propaganda. Chemist Dr. Hans Scholz lives through a tortuous political transformation and maturation process. Finally, he becomes wrapped up in his political neutrality and closes his eyes to the fact that poison is being produced in his factory. Standing before the judges at the Nuremberg trials he has to face the fact that he was partly responsible for the deaths of millions in the gas chambers of the extermination camps.
- DirectorSlatan DudowStarsSonja SutterLotte LoebingerAnneliese BookBerlin, seven years after WWII. Four women are looking for happiness and a good man in the divided city. Their destinies are loosely connected through one person: the West Berlin dandy and womanizer, Conny. Released at the peak of East German cultural and political dogmatism, the film was heavily critiqued, especially by female party leaders who objected that its portrayal of the four women did not represent the qualities that characterized women in the new society. Now considered as a richly contradictory work, Destinies of Women represents an encore production by the Dudow/Eisler/Brecht creative team that also made Kuhle Wampe in 1932.
- DirectorMartin HellbergStarsHelga GöringGünther SimonEduard von Winterstein"The condemned Village". After years in Soviet Captivity, farmer Heinz Weizmann returns to his village in West Germany. His joy of returning home is clouded by news the U.S. occupation forces intend to build an airfield on village lands. The villagers are expected to just move away. Led by Heinz they protest. He is arrested and imprisoned but eventually support from all of West Germany prevents the airfield from being built, and the village and their way of life is saved.
- DirectorKurt MaetzigStarsYôko TaniOldrich LukesIgnacy MachowskiWhen an alien artifact discovered on Earth is found to have come from Venus, an international team of astronauts embarks to investigate its origins.
- DirectorYuli RaizmanStarsLeonid KhmaraRudolf BoettgerVasiliy ChuikovOver 40 Army cameramen from the 1st Belorussian and the 1st Ukrainian Fronts contributed footage of this remarkable documentary of the fall of Berlin, including captured German footage.
- DirectorGrigoriy AleksandrovSergei EisensteinStarsMarfa LapkinaM. IvaninKonstantin Vasilyev100.000.000 peasants - illiterate, poor, hungry. There comes a day when one woman decides that she can live old life no longer. Using ways of new Soviet state and industrial progress she changes life and labor of her village.
- DirectorEfim DziganStarsVasiliy ZaychikovGeorgi BushuyevNikolay IvakinIn 1919, during the post-revolution Russian Civil War, a naval detachment (made up of communist Reds) defends the strategic city of Petrograd from the White Russian counterrevolutionary forces. Director Yefim Dzigan had himself fought for the Bolsheviks in the fleet, so the Red sailors are the heroes of the film. The young Soviet State was besieged by enemies on all sides, and the Revolution was fighting for its life. While clearly propagandistic, the film is often quite poetic visually, not naturalistic as was prescribed by authorities at the time. The film was honored at the 1937 Paris World's Fair. The video version is in Russian with English subtitles.
- DirectorChetan AnandStarsRafiq AnwarUma AnandKamini KaushalThe film takes an expressionist look at the gulf between the rich and poor in society. The film centers on wealthy, capacious landlord Sarkar (Rafi Peer) who lives in a palatial estate high on a mountain, while the poor toil and starve in the valley below. The villagers of 'Neecha Nagar' harbor hate for Sarkar, and their hatred is fueled even more by the fact that Sarkar plans to direct all the sewage into the village to make way for his housing project. The villagers protest this move with their head, Balraj (Rafiq Anwar) leading a movement against Sarkar's plan. Sarkar's daughter Maya (Uma Anand) joins the movement against her father and falls in love with Balraj. With the sewage flowing through the village, epidemic starts to spread, threatening the villagers' lives. Can the poor people of 'Neecha Nagar' survive the greed and wickedness of the rich? Can Sarkar and his malicious ways be put to an end?
- DirectorBimal RoyStarsBalraj SahniNirupa RoyRatan KumarIn the hope of earning enough money to pay off his debts and save his land, a poor farmer becomes a rickshaw puller in Calcutta and faces many difficulties.
- DirectorArmand Guerra
- DirectorGrigoriy KozintsevLeonid TraubergStarsDavid GutmanYelena KuzminaAndrei KostrichkinIn the beginning of the industrial revolution, the Paris Commune was established in 1871 against the rich and the powerful, and violently repressed by the army that remained faithful to a tamer form of Republicanism. How could the love story between a young sales girl and a soldier unable to decide if he was pro or against the radical fashion? Two short months were needed for the answer to be found - in blood and tears, and under rain that washes all past memories. Any day, a New Babylon shop will open with frilly things for the bourgeois girls. The washerwomen will be there to wash them.
- DirectorJean-Luc GodardJean-Pierre GorinGérard MartinStarsGian Maria VolontèAnne WiazemskyCristiana Tullio-AltanA filmic essay on class struggle which draws on images from westerns but has no plot and is both an experiment in making a revolutionary film and an interrogation of how successfully such a film can be revolutionary.
- DirectorPatricio GuzmánStarsAbilio FernándezSalvador AllendeThe chronicle of the political tension in Chile in 1973 and of the violent counter revolution against the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende.
- DirectorBill DouglasStarsRobin SoansWilliam GaminaraStephen BatemanThe story of "The Tolpuddle Martyrs". A group of nineteenth century English farm laborers who formed one of the first trade unions and started a campaign to receive fair wages.
- DirectorJin XieStarsXijuan ZhuXingang WangMei XiangIn 1930s, Wu Qionghua was a housemaid of Nan-ba-tian, a cruel warlord of a village in Hainan Island, China. Often abused by her master, Qionghua was finally rescued by Hong Changqing, leader of the Red Detachment of Women - a troop of women soldiers. She joined the troop and became the Detachment leader after the death of Hong. They captivated and executed the warlord and liberated Qionghua's home village.
- DirectorWenhua LiStarsZhenqing GuoSuya WangXiying WenSet in the "cultural revolution" period of China, a college of labor is set up in a mountain area of Jiangxi Province. Long Guozheng, a veteran cadre of Chinese People's Anti-Japanese Military and Political College, is sent to the new college as secretary and headmaster. He has to try his best to lead the college on the right track.
- DirectorHong-sik KangStarsChan JiYe-bong MunHak ParkThe first full-length North Korean film portrays the glorious revolution of patriots and low-class farmers against the oppression of landlords and Japanese imperialists.
- DirectorClaude-Jean BonnardotStarsClaude-Jean BonnardotSi MieunKil-son OmAt the beginning of the Korean war, the love story, in a remote village, between a young worker and the daughter of a traditional musician.
- DirectorJim FinnStarsJung Yoon LeeDaniela KostovaSung KimReady for a Marxist-Leninist-musical documentary? The Busby Berkeley of propaganda, Jim Finn, follows a South Korean video artist in North Korea who hopes to revitalize Juche cinema, somewhat inspired by a true story of a South Korean filmmaker kidnapped in the 70s to make the North Korean film industry better. In the mod 60s, film-fanatic Kim Jong Il adapted his father's Juche (pronounced choo-CHAY) philosophy to propaganda, film and art. Translated as self-reliance, Juche is a hybrid of Confucian and authoritarian Stalinist pseudo-socialism. Finn is the undisputed champion of propaganda as pure art, and this is his best yet. He uses the tools of traditional documentary, formal avant-garde, language lesson videos, and some sci-fi recreations to dig down to the souls of governments, leaders and media manipulation. No kitsch mockumentary, just careful analysis of the love of cinema that is as surreally funny as it is truth. Isn't art revolutionary? Is there humanism within all those faces?
- DirectorJong-pal JonStarsRyon Hwa KimYong Suk KimRyon-gu NamA North Korean romantic comedy that involves martial arts.
- DirectorStanislav RostotskiyStarsAndrey MartynovIrina DolganovaElena DrapekoDuring World War II in a small village outpost, a Soviet sergeant has his troop replaced by an all female unit. As they finally begin to appreciate one another, German paratroopers are spotted nearby and the realities of war emerge.
- DirectorLeonid BykovStarsLeonid BykovSergey PodgornyySergei IvanovDuring World War II, a Soviet veteran pilot teaches newcomers that war is transient, and music is eternal.
- DirectorVladimir RogovoyStarsGeorgiy YumatovAlina PokrovskayaVasiliy LanovoyWars and time could not break the connection between the fates of Alexei and Ivan. Soviet drama about lifelong friendship.