Movies from USSR, Red China, etc.

[Red Flag Waver]

Recommend me some films from the former communist (or state-capitalist, or whatever) countries. I've seen movies by Eisenstein and Parajanov, but not much else, and I'm completely ignorant of the cinema of Vietnam, North Korea and China (apart from Hong Kong).

[tuwix]

I could recommend a movie based on facts from the times of so-called Polish People's Republic about Stalinism titled: 'Man of Marble'.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Tarkovsky, Stalker, Nostalghia, the Mirror

Samsonov, The Burning Miles

Motyl, The White Sun of the Desert

Kovačević, Balkan Spy

[Kalinin's Facial Hair]

Try some Dziga Vertov and his Man with a Movie Camera and Three songs about Lenin.

[jimjones]

Watch All Of the Tarkovsky movies - you can find many of them on torrent sites.

[Münchhausen]

If you like surrealism, I can recommend the films of Jan Švankmajer. He is a filmmaker from former Czechoslovakia and he still makes movies today. His films are rather sinister for the most part and he uses a lot of stop-motion. Most of his feature-length films were released after the collapse of czechoslovakia, but most of his short films were produced between 1965 and 1989. I would recommend The Pendulum, the Pit and Hope and Jabberwocky, also the 1988 full-length movie Alice.

[KarlLeft]

There's a good Hungarian film made in 1968 called "The Red and the White" directed by Miklos Jancso. It's about Hungarians fighting in the Russian Civil War. A lot of it is shot in long takes where the camera follows the action continuously without a cut. Great camera work!

I know you said you've seen Eisenstein films. Have you seen "Strike!"? I think it's from around 1930 and is probably my favorite Eisenstein.

[Os Cangaceiros]

"Daisies" (Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, 1966)
"Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders" (Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, 1970)
"Pulgasari" (Democratic People's Republic of Korea, 1985)
"Sweet Movie" (1974, not actually a production from a socialist bloc country but the director Dušan Makavejev and the lead actress Anna Prucnal were from Yugoslavia and Poland, respectively)

[Red Flag Waver]

I know you said you've seen Eisenstein films. Have you seen "Strike!"? I think it's from around 1930 and is probably my favorite Eisenstein.
So far I've only seen Alexander Nevsky and part of Ivan the Terrible. I will definitely plan on checking out Strike, along with all these other titles that have been mentioned.

[Red Flag Waver]

"Daisies" (Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, 1966)
"Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders" (Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, 1970)
"Pulgasari" (Democratic People's Republic of Korea, 1985)
"Sweet Movie" (1974, not actually a production from a socialist bloc country but the director Dušan Makavejev and the lead actress Anna Prucnal were from Yugoslavia and Poland, respectively)
I'm pretty big on monster movies, so Pulgasari has been on my "to see" list for some time. That was the one made by that kidnapped Japanese director, right?

[KurtFF8]

There used to be a great website (which evidently only recently went offline) that I had linked to via my own blog called the "Socialist Film Review" or something along those lines. It in part inspired me to make the Left Film Review.

I would love to find a way to contact the author and begin to republish some of his/her posts on my own blog