ZEMLJA

Dovshenko was both a sophisticated revolutionary artist and a Ukrainian tribal bard; his name epitomizes a cine-lyricism so passionate as to verge on pantheism. Compared to his peers Eisenstein and Vertov, Dovshenko proved to be a man of many genres. The astonishingly beautiful Earth is unlike anything else in movies. Drafted to make a film on rural collectivization, Dovshenko produced a myth presenting the creation of the kolkhoz as a natural phenomenon, part of a cosmic cycle of birth and death. Murdered by a crazed kulak (or wealthy peasant), Earths young hero is a martyr to the fertility of harvest. Released amid the campaign to liquidate the kulaks, Earth is ultimately a pagan myth made to celebrate a tragic social experiment.
(Jim Hoberman)