The World Premiere of

“The History of the Civil War”

by DZIGA VERTOV
 THE FILM INFO
Title: “The History of the Civil War” (“Istoriya Grazhdanskoi voiny”)
Country: Russia
Director (1921): Dziga Vertov
Director of Restoration (2021): Nikolai Izvolov
Producer: Konstantin Grinberg-Vertogradsky
Production companies: Aerogroup (Russia), Grinberg Bros (Israel)
Genre: Documentary, History
Category: Black and white, Silent
Score: The Anvil Orchestra
Subtitles language: Russian, translated into English
Duration: 94 minutes
Status: Completed
Summary
A SENSATIONAL
IDFA EVENT
A LOST FILM OF
DZIGA VERTOV
ABOUT THE FILM
“The History of the Civil War” was released by Dziga Vertov in 1921.
The documentary film covers the events of the Civil War in Russia
(1918 – 1921) which appear in chronological order: "White Terror",
"Suppression of counter-revolutionary uprisings", "Partisan
movement", "Wrangel front", and others.
Just like in Vertov’s previous film, "The Anniversary of the
Revolution", we see a grandiose cinematic work capturing one of the
most important historic events of the 20th century.
Furthermore, it includes several historical characters, leaders of the
Soviet government and of the Red Army, such as: Leon Trotsky,
Kliment Voroshilov, Semyon Budyonny, Fedor Raskolnikov, Ivar
Smilga, Sergo Ordzhonikidze, and others. Many of them were
executed or imprisoned in 1937, some committed suicide or
emigrated.
ABOUT THE FILM
This film can be considered as one of Vertov's first author's experiments, and he himself called it a steppingstone to
“Kino-Pravda”, the newsreel series launched in 1922.

Dziga Vertov could witness by himself many events of the Civil War in Soviet Russia as he visited the front several times
to direct the filming under combat conditions.

The image quality is sometimes quite poor because starting from the 1920s many films were duplicated, meaning they
were printed not from the negative, but from the positive.

The projection speed is 18 frames per second, which corresponds the best to the projection speed of films of the time.
 THE FILM
RESTORATION
The film restoration was a complex process that took
Nikolai Izvolov almost two years.

The description of the film “The History of the Civil War”

had been preserved by the Russian cinematographer
Grigory Boltyansky (1885-1953) and stored in the Archive
of Literature and Art in Moscow.

Based on the texts left by Boltyansky, Nikolai Izvolov made

meticulous researches in additional sources. From these
findings, he started searching for the pieces of the original
materials stored in different archives.

Finally, he managed to collect all the parts of the 35-mm

films, scan and assemble them in a 94’ film.
ABOUT THE FILM DIRECTOR
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR OF
RESTORATION
THE SOUNDTRACK
CONTACT