The film tells about the creation of the first collective farm communes and class enmity. Vasyl, a member of the Komsomol, with the help of a local party organization, gets a tractor and plows private boundaries "on kulak fields." However, this enthusiasm will cost him dearly.
Direction
Dovzhenko's editing turns wheat fields into abstract art.
Cinematography
Faces and fruit get equal loving close-ups.
Editing
Montage so rhythmic you forget it's agitprop.
Director
Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Dovzhenko's father was a kulak; the film's celebration of their destruction haunted him personally.
Stalin loved it, but Soviet officials later banned it for 'nationalist deviation' — too much Ukrainian soul, not enough hammer.
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