Arsenal is a 1928 Soviet film by Ukrainian director Alexander Dovzhenko

Alexander Dovzhenko

Aleksandr Petrovich Dovzhenko , was a Soviet screenwriter, film producer and director of Ukrainian descent. He is often cited as one of the most important early Soviet filmmakers, alongside Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin.- Biography :...

. It is the second film in his "Ukraine Trilogy", the first being Zvenigora

Zvenigora

Zvenigora, or Zvenyhora is a 1928 Soviet silent film by Ukrainian director Alexander Dovzhenko. Regarded as a silent revolutionary epic, Dovzhenko's initial film in his "Ukraine Trilogy" is almost religious in its tone, relating a millennium of Ukrainian history through the story of an old man...

(1928) and the third being Earth

Earth (1930 film)

Earth is a 1930 Soviet film by Ukrainian director Alexander Dovzhenko, concerning an insurrection by a community of farmers, following a hostile takeover by Kulak landowners...

(1930).

The film concerns an episode in the Russian Civil War

Russian Civil War

The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...

 in 1918 in which the Kiev Arsenal January Uprising

Kiev Arsenal January Uprising

Kiev Arsenal January Uprising, sometimes called simply the January Uprising or the January Rebellion , was the Bolshevik organized workers' armed revolt that started on January 29, 1918 at the Kiev Arsenal factory during the Ukrainian-Soviet War....

 of workers aided the besieging Bolshevik army against the Ukrainian national Parliament Central Rada 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", Dovzhenko's eye for wartime absurdities (for example, an attack on an empty trench) anticipates later pacifist sentiments in films by Jean Renoir

Jean Renoir

Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...

 and Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...

.

External links

• Ray Uzwyshyn's Visual Exploration of Arsenal