After The End of St. Petersburg, Storm Over Asia is the third and final part of Pudovkin’s loose “Bolshevik trilogy,” the films on which his reputation as one of the leading Soviet filmmakers rests. The character of the film’s Russian title, the “heir of Genghis Khan,” is a Mongolian fur trapper and trader who rises from obscurity to claim the status of a hero of the Revolution due to his resistance to British troops occupying Mongolia during the Russian civil war that followed. Like Dziga Vertov’s A Sixth Part of the World,Pudovkin’s Storm Over Asia is a celebration of the Soviet Union as a multicultural nation. If the political thrust of Vertov’s film is a critique of capitalism, Pudovkin’s target is colonialism. And if much of Mother plays like a melodrama, Storm Over Asia remains an exemplary anti-colonial adventure film.

Live Musical Accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis