Directed by Oleksandr Dovzhenko | 84 mins | 1930
For nearly a century, Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s final silent feature, which depicts a clash between reactionary landowning kulaks and modernizing muzhiks, has spawned debate: is it a propagandist paean to Stalin’s collectivization project, or, as certain Soviet censors suspected, an on-the-sly celebration of a folk culture threatened with impending erasure? What is certain is that "Earth", with its distinct synthesis of Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Vertov, is among the greatest films of the silent canon.