"The Chekist" (Russian film)

[C.J._Griffin]

This is one of the best independent foreign films I have ever seen. It shows the Bolsheviks for what they really were, totalitarian mass murderers revelling in mass terror. Many will be shaken by this film, as it shows mass execution after mass execution of innocent victims, who were forced to strip naked before being murdered in cold blood. Highly recommended, especially for those with a sympathetic view of Lenin and the Bolshevik coup.


"In 1917, at the birth of the Russian Revolution, the Bolshevik secret police (C.H.E.K.A.) unleashed a reign of bloody terror to wipe out any opposition to Communism. The CHEKIST is the first Russian feature to reveal the true face of the CHEKA, as this powerful drama follows the daily rituals of a Cheka Officer as he and his men judge and execute their victims...Jews...Christians...workers...intellectuals...aristocrats... all who reject the new Soviet religion."

http://www.cinemaparallel.com/Rogo.html

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103949/

http://www.buyindies.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic%2bFTContentServer?pagename=BIV2/listing&item_id=FCTS-24660

[Dashkova]

Um...I'm assuming you are referring to a drama and not a documentary?  If so, then it is the filmmakers version of events.  Your post reads as though the viewer is witnessing actual footage.  But even documentarians have been using Eisenstein's Oktober as a demonstration of actual events, which of course, it isn't.

[C.J._Griffin]

Um...I'm assuming you are referring to a drama and not a documentary?  If so, then it is the filmmakers version of events.  Your post reads as though the viewer is witnessing actual footage.  But even documentarians have been using Eisenstein's Oktober as a demonstration of actual events, which of course, it isn't.

Yes, I'm referring to the drama. If you want to say this film is simply the directors version of events (and therefore imply it's all fiction), you can say the same thing about all the Holocaust films pumped out of Hollywood, right?

[Dashkova]

Well, uh, of course!  All dramatic films are fiction.  They may be *based* on actual events but they're not being filmed live! Furthermore, the event is being acted out by paid performers. Yes, that includes films on the Holocaust and every other historical topic.

I think it's fine to view films as entertainment, but nothing more.

Braveheart, Titanic, The Return of Martin Guerre, Nicholas and Alexandra (it's said that Massie got up and left during the premiere), Gone With The Wind, I could go on and on, but I have a ton of work to do.  I think you get the idea.

Movies are for fun. It's a mistake to allow oneself to be *educated* by them.

[Greg_King]

I like "The Chekist" as a piece of art-film, though I think if you watch it seriously you have to do so on the understanding that it reflects (and was made, as the director indicated) a post-Soviet repudiation of the undoubted excesses of the Bolshevik regime in some respects.  It is, in essence, not a piece of quasi-history, but a propaganda film, designed to portray (as was often especially the case with Russian films of the early 1990s) everything Soviet as a horrendous evil (a good example of this use of film as anti-Bolshevik polemic is Anatoly Ivanov's "Last Days of the Last Tsar" that, while very well done, also resorts to absurd and imagined scenes of a drunken Yurovsky and his guards throwing food at Nicholas II, etc.).  But as a piece of art, the film works quite well in its desolate brutality.

Greg King

[C.J._Griffin]

Well, uh, of course!  All dramatic films are fiction.  They may be *based* on actual events but they're not being filmed live! Furthermore, the event is being acted out by paid performers. Yes, that includes films on the Holocaust and every other historical topic.

I think it's fine to view films as entertainment, but nothing more.

Braveheart, Titanic, The Return of Martin Guerre, Nicholas and Alexandra (it's said that Massie got up and left during the premiere), Gone With The Wind, I could go on and on, but I have a ton of work to do.  I think you get the idea.

Movies are for fun. It's a mistake to allow oneself to be *educated* by them.

But in my view, it's nice to finally see a film where the genocidal villians are not of the political Right (Hitler, Pinochet, Franco, etc.), which is what we usually (actually ALWAYS) see coming out of Hollywood.

[C.J._Griffin]

I like "The Chekist" as a piece of art-film, though I think if you watch it seriously you have to do so on the understanding that it reflects (and was made, as the director indicated) a post-Soviet repudiation of the undoubted excesses of the Bolshevik regime in some respects.  It is, in essence, not a piece of quasi-history, but a propaganda film, designed to portray (as was often especially the case with Russian films of the early 1990s) everything Soviet as a horrendous evil (a good example of this use of film as anti-Bolshevik polemic is Anatoly Ivanov's "Last Days of the Last Tsar" that, while very well done, also resorts to absurd and imagined scenes of a drunken Yurovsky and his guards throwing food at Nicholas II, etc.).  But as a piece of art, the film works quite well in its desolate brutality.

Greg King

Again, would this also apply to all the Holocaust films coming out of Hollywood? Or how about the constant demonizing of the Pinochet regime in films as an absolute horrendous evil? Is that propaganda or is there a double standard for bloodsoaked Left-wing totalitarian regimes?

[Greg_King]

A film is either fiction, or it isn't.  "The Chekist," while loosely based on actual events (like "Schindler's List," etc.) is not history nor should it be considered historically accurate.  It is a historical docu-drama, based on real events, interpreted through the prejudices and lens of its writer, director, etc.  In this case, there is a great difference between a film like "Schindler's List," which makes no claim to be anything other than a fictionalized drama based on real events, and "The Chekist," which as the director stated explicitly in an interview, was conceived specifically to depict "the brutality and moral vacuum of the Soviet regime."  As a piece of art, it's fine, and if it spurs someone to explore further study of the issues involved, great, but like Oliver Stone's "JFK" or "Nixon," it's just one person's interpretation of a historical episode in history.  That's not to say that the Cheka were largely anything but brutal thugs, but you cannot extrapolate a fictional drama into an expose that "shows the Bolsheviks for what they really were"-that would require a careful, historically accurate documentary.

Greg King

[olga]

I like "The Chekist" as a piece of art-film, though I think if you watch it seriously you have to do so on the understanding that it reflects (and was made, as the director indicated) a post-Soviet repudiation of the undoubted excesses of the Bolshevik regime in some respects.  It is, in essence, not a piece of quasi-history, but a propaganda film, designed to portray (as was often especially the case with Russian films of the early 1990s) everything Soviet as a horrendous evil (a good example of this use of film as anti-Bolshevik polemic is Anatoly Ivanov's "Last Days of the Last Tsar" that, while very well done, also resorts to absurd and imagined scenes of a drunken Yurovsky and his guards throwing food at Nicholas II, etc.).  But as a piece of art, the film works quite well in its desolate brutality.

I think Greg just about summed it up.  

[AGRBear]

A film is either fiction, or it isn't.  "The Chekist," while loosely based on actual events (like "Schindler's List," etc.) is not history nor should it be considered historically accurate.  It is a historical docu-drama, based on real events, interpreted through the prejudices and lens of its writer, director, etc.  In this case, there is a great difference between a film like "Schindler's List," which makes no claim to be anything other than a fictionalized drama based on real events, and "The Chekist," which as the director stated explicitly in an interview, was conceived specifically to depict "the brutality and moral vacuum of the Soviet regime."  As a piece of art, it's fine, and if it spurs someone to explore further study of the issues involved, great, but like Oliver Stone's "JFK" or "Nixon," it's just one person's interpretation of a historical episode in history.  That's not to say that the Cheka were largely anything but brutal thugs, but you cannot extrapolate a fictional drama into an expose that "shows the Bolsheviks for what they really were"-that would require a careful, historically accurate documentary.

Greg King

Other than the "food fight", you mentioned,  was there another scene that was grossly  inacurate?

I have not seen the film, but,  I was just wondering if there was more to it since you linked it to Oliver Stone who may have dilerately distorted the facts on both men.

[Mike]

Not about the film, but surely about chekists [size=10][works by three different Russian painters from the SGU collection][/size]
Waiting for them to come:

They're coming:

The "people's enemy" is led away: