Arsenal (1929 film)

Arsenal
Stenberg brothers' film poster
Directed byOleksandr Dovzhenko
Written byOleksandr Dovzhenko
Produced byOleksandr Dovzhenko
StarringSemyon Svashenko
Nikolai Nademsky
Amvrosy Buchma
Les Podorozhnij
CinematographyDanylo Demutsky
Music byIgor Belza
Distributed byOdessa Film Factory of VUFKU
Release date
  • February 25, 1929 (February 25, 1929)
Running time
92 min.
CountrySoviet Union
LanguagesSilent film
Russian intertitles

Arsenal (Russian: Арсенал, romanized: Arsenal, Ukrainian: Арсенал, also alternative title January Uprising in Kyiv in 1918[1]) is a 1929 silent Soviet drama film by Ukrainian director Oleksandr Dovzhenko.[2] 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.[3][4] The film was made in 1928 and released early in 1929.[1][5] 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. Regarded by film scholar Vance Kepley, Jr. as "one of the few Soviet political films which seems even to cast doubt on the morality of violent retribution",[citation needed] Dovzhenko's eye for wartime absurdities (for example, an attack on an empty trench) anticipates later pacifist sentiments in films by Jean Renoir and Stanley Kubrick.[original research?]

  1. ^ a b Арсенал - информация о фильме (in Russian). Kino-teatr.ru. Retrieved 2012-12-19.
  2. ^ Peter Rollberg (2016). Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Cinema. US: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 62–63. ISBN 978-1442268425.
  3. ^ Jay Leyda (1960). Kino: A History of the Russian and Soviet Film. George Allen & Unwin. pp. 252–255.
  4. ^ "Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre". Archived from the original on 2016-11-23. Retrieved 2016-11-22.
  5. ^ Magill's Survey of Silent Films, Vol.1 A-FLA p.152 edited by Frank N. Magill c.1982 ISBN 0-89356-240-8 (3 book set ISBN 0-89356-239-4)