Vsevolod Pudovkin was one of the great Soviet filmmakers of the silent era and this collection presents his first three features. Pudovkin's debut feature Mother (1926), based on the novel by Maxim Gorky set in the failed 1905 uprising, presents a family as a microcosm of the worker's revolution, with the mother oppressed by her violent, drunkard husband and protected by her activist son. When the son is sent to Siberia after a sham trial, Mother follows and is embraces the revolutionary spirit. The film uses editing techniques influenced by Lev Kuleshov to exemplify conflict and symbolic imagery to illustrate ideas, but he also brings poetry to the storytelling. He further develops his techniques in the film, The End of St. Petersburg (1927), which chronicles the making of a Bolshevik through a journey of a rural peasant from an illiterate farmer to a naïve factory worker and soldier focused on his own survival to enlightened revolutionary ready to sacrifice himself for the people's struggle. Pudovkin uses a variety of editing techniques to illustrate how both capitalism and war work against the interests of the working man and enrich the moneyed classes. Storm Over Asia (1928) again dramatizes the making of a revolutionary, this time a Mongolian fox hunter who is oppressed and used by the occupying British government. Pudovkin shows how a simple man observes the injustices around him and is roused to action, in the climax leading an army of Mongols to drive out the foreign occupiers. Where Mother is more intimate and poetic, St. Petersburg and Storm Over Asia are big, sweeping, ambitious dramas with dynamic imagery and dramatic editing designed to rouse audiences. They are at once sophisticated and complex films and exciting works of cinema. And unlike Sergei Eisenstein, who played down individual action to portray a "mass" hero, Pudovkin gives audiences relatable characters to carry the drama and deliver his message of revolutionary enlightenment. None of the films have been formally restored and they show signs of wear and damage from their source materials but they have all been remastered for this edition and Storm Over Asia is mastered from a new 2K scan of a 35mm preservation print. Mother features English intertitles and presented with a piano score by Antonio Coppola and commentary by film historian Peter Bagrov. The End of St. Petersburg features Russian intertitles with English subtitles and presented with an orchestral score composed and conducted by Vladimir Yurovsky. Storm Over Asia features Russian intertitles with English subtitles and is presented with an orchestral score composed by Timothy Brock plus commentary by film historian Jan-Christopher Horack. The set also includes Pudovkin's directorial debut Chess Fever (1925), a short satire of the chess craze in Moscow, archival shorts featuring footage of St. Petersberg, visual essay A Revolution in Five Moves from filmmaker Maxim Pozdorovkin, the short film "Five Principles of Editing," and a booklet. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)