The year 2011 marked the 70th anniversary of the deportations of June 14 1941, when 15 425 residents of Latvia (Latvians, Jews, Russians, Poles) were deported to Siberia. Among them there were 3 751 children aged up to 16. During the process men were separated from their families and sent to gulags, where many were sentenced to death, while others were imprisoned in labour camps. The facts of history and dry and few, but many of the victims and their children and grandchildren are still among us. During the summer of 2010, people who were deported to Siberia in 1941 as children joined their own children and a video production crew to travel back to the far North of Russia.
Could our mounting modern problems have ancient solutions? Travel to the depths of China to find out.
The children who were sent to Siberia in 1941 have not seen their fathers – in their memories they recollect: “My father was arrested, he was sent to Vyatlag camp. He died there in March, 1942. He was not convicted. Father was tried in the autumn of 1942, when he was already dead, Moscow Troika verdict: 10 years in prison and confiscation of property...”The railcar moves along overgrown rails. For 70 years, the twelve participants of the journey have wanted to go to the places from where their fathers did not return. Among the harsh nature the tension on their faces shows.
In 1944 Crimean Tatars has suffered a long road in exile. It was accompanied by famine, illness and loss. In the first years of exile, almost half of deported Crimean Tatars died. But those, who survived, dreamed of only one thing - to return to Crimea. The documentary 1944 tells about the tragedy of all Crimean Tatars through several separate life stories. They are cherished by each Crimean Tatar family and must be remembered by all generations to come.
Climate change has reached the indigenous Nenets people in the north of Siberia. The nomads' herds of reindeer move on thin ice. The warming in the Russian Arctic is becoming dramatically visible. Huge craters open in the thawing permafrost and expose dangerous viruses and bacteria. Forest floors dry out and the taiga catches on fire. The pack ice off the coast is melting and depriving polar bears of their habitat so that they approach human settlements in their desperation. The changes in the nature of the Arctic Circle combine with the measurements of researchers and observations of the indigenous people to form a disturbing overall picture: In the Russian Arctic, Pandora's box has been opened! The film team had the chance to shoot in regions that were been restricted areas for decades. The documentary shows in impressive and depressing images already existing effects, phenomena and ominous interlinkages of global warming.
The extraordinary life and career of the Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, a brilliant and charismatic, but also rebellious, favorite son of the Soviet Union.
In 1829 the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt attempted a russian-siberian expedition. Humboldt travelled to obtain a clear view of nature, people and life in this immense country. 2019 naturalists and humanists attempted a transdisciplinary expedition on the trails of Humboldt. To capture the events various cameras were taken along. A non-chronological narration.
After 20 years of living in Berlin, the director Olga Delane goes back to her roots in a small Siberian village, where she is confronted with traditional views of relationships, life and love. The man is the master in the home; the woman’s task is to beget children and take care of the household (and everything else, too). Siberian Love provides unrivaled insights into the (love) life of a Siberian village and seeks the truth around the universal value of traditional relationships.
Imagine one of the most remote wildernesses in the world. Granddaughter Masha and Vladimir, the protagonists of this story from Central Siberia try the impossible to keep their nomadic traditions alive.
In the Darhat valley in northern Mongolia, the horses of nomadic tribes are stolen by bandits who then sell them to Russian slaughterhouses. Shukhert, a brave horseman, relentlessly pursues them through the Mongolian taiga, bordering Siberia.
Really strange documentary of Wheeler Dixon production quality on the Tunguska Event and the possibility of it happening again causing an apocalypse (basically a meteor scare film) sprinkled with UFO conspiracy kooks, and other 'professionals', riddled with stock footage of all kinds, freaky moog music and sound fx, a Dr. Who rip-off end theme, Victor Buono as Homer the Archivist, a philosophical history recorder in a space ship with a HAL 9000 type talking computer named Ino, there's also another space ship with Egyptian looking aliens girls with pasties and see-thru blouses.
In the middle of the Siberian taiga, 450 miles from the nearest village, live two families : the Braguines and the Kilines. Not a single road leads there. A long trip on the Ienissei River, first by boat, then by helicopter, is the only way to reach Braguino. Self-sufficient, both families live there according to their own rules and principles. In the middle of the village: a barrier. The two families refuse to speak. In the river sits an island, where another community is being built : that of the children. Free, unpredictable, wild. Stemming from the fear of the other, that of wild beasts, and the joy procured by the immensity of the forest, unravels a cruel tale in which tensions and fear give shape to the geography of an ancestral conflict.
St. Petersburg, Russia, December 30th, 1916. Grigori Rasputin is assassinated. The story of the humble peasant who became the most influential adviser to czarina Alexandra Feodorovna, wife of the last czar, Nicholas II Romanov.
At 7:14 am on 30 June 1908, the largest explosion recorded in human history to date reverberated throughout our planet. The force of the explosion was two thousand times that of the Hiroshima bomb. A woodland area the size of Luxembourg was eradicated in the Siberian taiga. This incident is recorded in history books as the Tunguska catastrophe. To this day, internationally renowned scientists of various disciplines argue about the causes of this disastrous explosion. The documentary discusses the latest and most controversial insights of these leading scientists. It identifies the reasons why Tunguska has evolved into a phenomenon and points out the curious results produced by this mythical event in culture and economy.
In 2021, an extreme heatwave gave rise to huge wildfires in the vast subarctic forests of Sakha, a northeastern republic in Siberia. The village of Shologon lies in this taiga landscape, shrouded in orange smoke and black ash. The forest is burning and the flames are approaching fast.
In Northern Russia, a few dozen people still live in their traditional houses surrounded by water, stone, and sand. Cut off from vital infrastructure, almost forgotten by regional governance, these people have to cope with their everyday struggles.
Chain-smoking artists, poets and playwrights were among the colourful array of intellectuals living in the ‘Slovo House’ in 1920s Ukraine. The communist paradise was built under Stalin's approval, but it quickly became a prison. The brutal Soviet regime spied on the inhabitants, destroying their eccentric way of life and sealing their fate. This fascinating film explores the extraordinary story of the building and its residents.
The story of Russian writer and Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) and his masterpiece, The Gulag Archipelago, published in Paris in 1973, which forever shook the very foundations of communist ideology.
Captain Kleinschmidt leads an expedition sponsored by the Carnegie Museum to the arctic regions of Alaska and Siberia to study the natives and the animal life.
In the center of the story is the life of the indigenous people of the village Bakhtia at the river Yenisei in the Siberian Taiga. The camera follows the protagonists in the village over a period of a year. The natives, whose daily routines have barely changed over the last centuries, keep living their lives according to their own cultural traditions.
The film details the early years of the legendary Siberian Punk/Rock group 'Гражданская Оборона' (Grazhdanskaya Oborona), and its frontman, Egor Letov.