Arsenal (1929)

Original title

Арсенал

Directed by

Oleksandr Dovzhenko

Genre

drama film, silent film, war film

Country

Soviet Union

Runtime

1h 32m

Rated

TP

Rating

6.7 of 10 from 59 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This silent film is about a workers' uprising in Kiev in 1918 during the Russian Civil War. It shows the conflict between the revolutionaries and the government that held power in Ukraine at the time.

symbolicpoeticstylizedrestrainedsolemnexpressivecontemplativehistoric

What happens

Arsenal (Russian: Арсенал; Ukrainian: Арсенал; alternate title: January Uprising in Kiev in 1918) is a 1929 silent Soviet drama film by Alexander Dovzhenko. The film depicts events following the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the subsequent Russian Civil War, and is a highly symbolic and poetic portrayal of the revolutionary spirit and the struggle for power. The film was shot at Odessa Film Factory of VUFKU by cameraman Danyl Demutskyi and used original sets made by Volodymyr Muller. The expressionist imagery, camera work and original drama were said to take the film far beyond the usual propaganda and made it one of the most important pieces of Ukrainian avant-garde cinema. The film was made in 1928 and released early in 1929. It is the second film in Dovzhenko's "Ukraine Trilogy", the first being Zvenigora (1928) and the third being Earth (1930). The film concerns an episode in the Russian Civil War in 1918 in which the Kiev Arsenal January Uprising of workers aided the besieging Bolshevik army against the Ukrainian People's Republic’s Central Rada council who held legal power in Ukraine at the time. Dovzhenko himself had participated in the conflict, but on the side of Central Rada. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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