The purpose of this course is to present the Russian and East European contribution to the world cinema in terms of film theory, experimentation with the cinematic language, social and political reflex. We focus on the following themes and issues: the invention of montage, the means of visual propaganda and the cinematic component to the communist cultural revolutions, party ideology and practices of social-engineering, cinematic response to the emergence of the totalitarian state in Russia and its subsequent installation in Eastern Europe after the WW2; the post-communist reality.