The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty Directed by Esfir Shub 1927, USSR, 87 min.

Shub is perhaps the best known among the women filmmakers of the Soviet avant-garde. The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty is a powerful documentary of tsarist Russia from just before World War I until the 1917 Revolution. Her technique is itself revolutionary: the film is stitched together from archival and found footage, including selections from forgotten films she discovered in storerooms and cupboards all over the Soviet Union. She tracked down footage that had been sold to the United States, as well as newsreels and home movies made by the tsar’s film crew. These are interspersed with long intertitles that link the fragments of film and place them in historical context. A pioneer of editing, Shub spliced key images and fragments to contrast the privileged life of the imperial family with the backbreaking labor of the masses.

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