Earth (Zemlya) - (Mr Bongo Films) (1930) [DVD]
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Product Description
This much lauded pioneering Russian silent film is seen as Ukrainian director Alexander Dovzhenko's best and often appears on critics' international top ten film lists. They buy a tractor to tear down the fences dividing land, but triumph soon turns to tragedy. In order to stand up to the opposition, the peasants form a committee headed by Vasili to collectivise the land and stock. The final work in a loose trilogy that also comprises Zvenigora (1928) and Arsenal (1929), Earth is Dovzhenko's celebration of life and an ultimate prayer to nature, the land and those who toil on it. Dovzhenko was commissioned to make what was intended to be a minor propaganda film to encourage the establishment of farming collectives. Set in the Ukraine it tells of the struggle between the peasants and the kulak, the local landlord. The film unfolds using a series of stunning visuals to reflect the constant cycle of birth, growth and death resulting in a truly poetic masterpiece.
Some Soviet films from the 1920s occasionally feel like work, but not this one. By general consensus, Earth is among the most exalted of all silent films. This is a true masterwork. What is so remarkable about the film is not merely the visual poetry, but Dovzhenko's earthy (there is no other word for it) appreciation for the human being: a grandfather pauses in his dying to gobble up a ripe pear, farmers urinate into the radiator of the overheated tractor, a child happily munches on a melon after a tragic death. Alexander Dovzhenko drew upon memories of his rural Ukrainian childhood for this lyrical ode to peasants (in true Soviet fashion, they are radicalized by the arrival of a new tractor). Dovzhenko embraces it all, and his image of a man dancing alone on a moonlit road is one of the cinema's great expressions of simple joy. --Robert Horton
Product Info
- Actor
- Stepan Shkurat
- Audience Rating
- Binding
- DVD
- Director
- Alexander Dovzhenko
- EAN
- 0711969114690
- Format
- PAL
- Label
- Mr Bongo Films
- Manufacturer
- Mr Bongo Films
- Number Of Discs
- 1
- Package Quantity
- 1
- Product Group
- DVD
- Product Type Name
- ABIS_DVD
- Publisher
- Mr Bongo Films
- Region Code
- 1
- Release Date
- 2010-05-01
- Running Time
- 139
- Studio
- Mr Bongo Films
- Title
- Earth (Zemlya) - (Mr Bongo Films) (1930) [DVD]
- UPC
- 711969114690
- ASIN
- B003AKJN00
- Sales Rank
- 161850
- Provider
- Amazon
- As of
- May 26, 2012, 7:26 pm
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