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 Kino-nedelya newsreels constitute the first films of Dziga Vertov. A total of 43 issues, each containing an average of 5 to 7 different items, were produced between May 1918 and June 1919. In the fall of 1918, Vertov joined the newsreel’s ranks and soon took on full responsibility for the series, defining the content and structure of each issue. The films provide an invaluable record of life in the young Soviet Russia, then in the throes of civil war.

In 2018, IDFA screened Dziga Vertov’s long-lost documentary Anniversary of the Revolution (1918). But there was yet another lost masterpiece by this pioneer of Soviet cinema. In 1921, Vertov edited The History of the Civil War, in which he told the story of the years when the Bolsheviks struggled to defeat domestic opposition to the revolution.
It must have been a great adventure for Vertov. He filmed street fights, attended military tribunals, and lay in trenches. Wherever he went he found devastation, damaged infrastructure, and bodies being collected on the streets. This is an unvarnished record of a country in chaos, marked by unstable alliances and brutal violence. So it’s understandable that the film’s producers decided not to release it at all.
The History of the Civil War has only been screened once before, in 1921. Nikolai Izvolov used historical records to reconstruct the original silent film from archive material and commissioned a new soundtrack.

Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries / Demonstrators carrying banners.

德齐加·韦尔托夫、伊莱扎维塔·斯维洛娃和米哈伊尔·考夫曼的一系列新闻影片，记录了20世纪20年代初的俄罗斯生活。

Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: Streetcar collision / Arms manufacturing plant resumes operation / Assembling an automobile / Bicycle and motorcycle races / A parade of Red Army armored units and an attack exercise.

Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: A bet is placed on the outcome of the Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries / The verdict / People in streetcars and on the street / A crashed aircraft / Reconstruction of streetcar line 13 / Peacetime use of tanks – airport construction work.

Lost Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel

Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel. The first themed issue of Kino-Pravda, devoted to the fifth anniversary of the October Revolution in 1922.

Peace - relation from Moscow conference with Polish diplomat Janusz Franciszek Radziwiłł and diplomats fom baltic states. Vertov says that USSR sign treaty beacouse they love peace, and forgets to mention that thay do it mainly beacouse they have been defeated by Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
Atheism - we see Pioneers and honest workers taking Orthodox icons out of the walls, and we see alsa manifesting pops and elievers portrayed as freaks and lunatics.
Education - youngsters reading prints and speeches in memory of Russian botanist Kliment Timiryazev.
Health - sport activities - skiing and hockey. Military exercises.
Defence - battleship, military academy, cavalery and skiing troops.
Kino-pravda ends with warning that new war approaches and it will be brought by Germans

Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: Hunger and harvest / Alliance between city and country / Agricultural and home industries exhibition: To the exhibition, construction work and preparations, exhibits, map of the exhibition, visitors