The film is about the life and work of Grigory Ordzhonikidze Konstantinoviche, an important personality in both the Communist Party and the Soviet state. The film includes speeches by his bereaved friends who attended his funeral. In 1937, after the unexpected death of Sergo Ordzhonikidze, Vertov received an urgent order from the government to produce a film about the life of Ordzhonikidze. He was ordered to work together with Yakov Bliohom and the director of the film "Battleship Potemkin" distributed by Goskino (Soviet State Committee for Cinematography).

The Shanghai Document (Russian: Шанхайский документ) is an early documentary film. This silent film was directed by Yakov Bliokh (Яков Блиох,1895-1957) and was released in the USSR in 1928.
The film portrays Shanghai, China in the early 1920s. It shows the contrasts between the world of Western expatriates (including Britons, Americans, New Zealanders, Australians, and Danes) who live in the luxurious Shanghai International Settlement, and that of the Shanghainese inhabitants, who spend their days laboring.
The events which inspired the film revolve around the Chinese nationalist revolution (1925-27), including the May Thirtieth Movement, and the First United Front of the Chinese Communist Party, and the Nationalists (the Kuomintang), and its collapse in February 1927 when Chiang Kai-shek ordered a purge of the Communists in Shanghai and in other cities held by the revolutionaries.