The Village Detective: A Song Cycle

Apr 27, 2021

1h 21m

★ 4.0

Overview

Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Iceland, July 9, 2016. The surprising discovery of a canister —containing four reels of The Village Detective (Деревенский детектив), a 1969 Soviet film—, caught in the nets of an Icelandic trawler, is the first step in a fascinating journey through the artistic life of film and stage actor Mikhail Ivanovich Zharov (1899-1981), icon and star of an entire era of Russian cinema.

Genres

Documentary

History

Production Companies

Hypnotic Pictures

Picture Palace Pictures

The Village Detective: A Song Cycle Trailers

Cast

Self - Fróði II Trawler Crew Member

Gísli Fannar Gylfason

Self - Former NFAI Director

Erlendur Sveinsson

Self - Former Gosfilmotond Curator

Pyotr Bagrov

Self - Actor / Various Roles (archive footage)

Mikhail Zharov

Self (archive footage)

Czar Nicholas II of Russia

Self - Politician (archive footage)

Vladimir Lenin

Self - Politician (archive footage)

Joseph Stalin

Self - Politician (archive footage)

Leon Trotsky

The views and thoughts of Canadian writer Margaret Atwood have never been more relevant than today. Readers turn to her work for answers as they confront the rise of authoritarian leaders, deal with increasingly intrusive technologies, and discuss climate change. Her books are useful as survival tools for hard times. But few know her private life. Who is the woman behind the stories? How does she always seem to know what is coming?

0.0

State of Bacon

May 15, 2014

State of Bacon tells the kinda real but mostly fake tale of an oddball group of characters leading up to the annual Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival. Bacon-enthusiasts, Governor Branstad, a bacon queen, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, members of PETA, and an envoy of Icelanders are not excluded from this bacon party and during the course of the film become intertwined with the organizers of the festival to show that bacon diplomacy is not dead.

0.0

So Clever Are German Spies

Dec 1, 1914

A horse and cart carrying two nuns is stopped by two men with fixed bayonets.

8.0

Nos restaurants : Une grande histoire française

Dec 30, 2023

No overview available.

5.0

Every Wall is a Door

Mar 25, 2017

Drawing on VHS tapes of a programme hosted by her mother on Bulgaria’s national television, the filmmaker gives a pop-style and in-depth chronicle of the gentle – even “over-gentle” – 1989 revolution.

3.5

I Remember Nothing

Mar 28, 2017

January 2011 : the revolution bursts in Tunisia, my father’s country. The Tunisian people scream in a rage and I, here in Paris, can feel their revolt vibrating in my heart.

6.0

Frihed forpligter

Oct 7, 1951

Danish social democratic propaganda film. During the Occupation, the young freedom fighter Søren had a good working relationship with a comrade in the resistance movement, despite the fact that Søren was a social democrat and his comrade a communist. After the liberation in May 1945, the differences that had been less important during the war begin to stand in Søren's way. Both his friendship with his comrade and his relationship with the wealthy Inger fall apart in the summer of liberation. But through his work in the Social Democratic Party, Søren experiences a renewed enthusiasm and resumes his relationship with Inger. Together, they actively engage in the party's work and both see it as an extension of the struggle for freedom during the occupation. Denmark's entry into NATO is particularly important.

No Image Available

3.5

Area 51: The Alien Interview

Jan 1, 1997

A documentary about aliens and UFOs with re-enactments of alien interviews and video of a supposedly real video of an alien being interviewed by government officials.

3.0

¿Por qué morir en Madrid?

May 2, 1966

No overview available.

6.0

Аркаим. Стоящий у солнца

Jan 1, 2008

No overview available.

7.0

I Invite You to My Execution

Oct 30, 2019

As Russian writer Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) thinks it is impossible that his novel Doctor Zhivago is published in the Soviet Union, because it supposedly shows a critical view of the October Revolution, he decides to smuggle several copies of the manuscript out of the country. It is first published in 1957 in Italia and the author receives the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1958, which has consequences.

6.7

A Very Animated War

Aug 15, 2021

From 1945 to 1989, after the capitulation of Nazi Germany, two rival ideologies, communism and capitalism, faced each other in a merciless battle. On one side of the Iron Curtain and on the other, throughout the Cold War, the USSR and the United States sought to shape children’s imaginations through their magazines and films. Never in the history of mankind have so many comic books been published and so many cartoons produced for young people. In November 1989, communism collapsed with the Berlin Wall; capitalism was left to decide the future of the world. What if this victory had been prepared for a long time, and our thinking conditioned, from our early childhood, to ensure this absolute triumph?

No Image Available

0.0

Omnibus: François Truffaut

Dec 2, 1973

No overview available.

4.7

Florián Rey: Of Light and Shadow

Oct 27, 2022

The life and professional career of the Spanish filmmaker Florián Rey (1894-1962), a brilliant artist who began his career in silent films and had great commercial success during the Second Republic (1931-1936): a journey to the early days of Spanish cinema.

0.0

Helgoland dem Frieden

Dec 1, 1951

Under the sign of the swastika, it was, amongst other things, turned into a naval base, it got heavily destroyed in two waves of attack in April of 1945 by British bombers. After the war, Heligoland was made available as bombing training ground for the English army by the West-German government. Seven young people occupied the isle and began to repair the emergency shelter for sailors who got in danger. This and further major actions eventually ended the bombing exercises. Back then, the watchword was: “Heligoland to the Germans! “ – “Heligoland for peace!”

5.2

The Four Elements

Jan 1, 1966

An educational film about power sources that’s rendered as a lyrical meditation on heat and vapor, The Four Elements is a poetic and avant-garde documentary Curtis Harrington made for the United States Information Agency.

No Image Available

0.0

John Huston War Stories

Sep 3, 1999

During World War II, the propaganda engine of the U.S. government made a pivotal decision with unforeseeable results: they tapped John Huston to shoot war documentaries with an expressly patriotic spin. Few could guess the degree to which Huston's documentaries would depict the sheer brutality and horror of modern warfare - particularly his Let There Be Light and The Battle of San Pietro. The films served (by default) as cinematic protests, even as they graced new and brilliant heights within the scope of American documentary. (Indeed, Light was banned by the government for 35 years). Midge Mackenzie's 1998 documentary John Huston: War Stories explores this little known facet of Huston's career, intercutting clips from the various documentaries with a Huston interview shot just prior to his death.

0.0

American Carnage

Nov 27, 2017

See how alt-right icon Steve Bannon’s years as a documentary filmmaker catapulted him to Breitbart News and the Trump White House.