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Arsenal

Arsenal

List Price: $24.99
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Product Info Reviews

Features:
  • Black & White


Description:

Alexander Dovzhenko's films are composed of astounding images and exciting dramatic moments, often in hard-to-follow narratives. Arsenal is no exception, a cinematically thrilling but narratively confusing story of a small band of factory workers who rise in rebellion and hole up in the Kiev munitions plant as nationalist troops surround the city. Based on a true story, the film explores conflicts in the Ukraine between the White Russians and the communist Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution. Worker Tymish (Semyon Svshenko) breaks with his fellow citizens to join the people's army and returns to face his countrymen in an impossible battle. A true document of the Soviet avant-garde at its most idiosyncratic, the film doesn't always make the finer points clear to the non-Soviet audience, but the stunning images and expressionist moments--as when Tymish miraculously survives point-blank fire from the enemy, symbolic of the enduring revolution in the face of sacrifice--give it a powerful cinematic life. Dovzhenko, considered by many critics to be the poet of Soviet cinema and a Ukrainian himself, invests the film with a sense of purpose and an astounding visual beauty. Kino's new edition, digitally mastered by David Shepard, presents the most complete version of this Soviet masterpiece ever seen. --Sean Axmaker
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