Dwa okeana

Two Oceans | Zwei Ozeane
Polar bears, broken propellers, the icy cold and whiteness as far as the eye can see. The expedition is not heading towards the North Pole, however, but towards the East: across the Arctic Ocean to the Pacific. Until then, none of the boldest of explorers had succeeded in the attempt endeavour. It is only during the Arctic summer of 1932 that the coal-powered ice-breaker Sibiryakov successfully battles its way through to the Bering Straits. The expedition specialists around Vladimir Shneyderov, who have previously endured both the Pamir glaciers and the heat of the Yemen, are close to the action with their sound-film equipment. The result is a truly innovative documentary film on the voyage through the ice to the Pacific.
Professor Otto Schmidt , the Russian Arctic explorer with the big bushy beard, and his crew were celebrated after they accomplished this feat, which caught the imagination of people the world over. Unlike the heroic epics produced by the Soviet state studios, however, Shneyderov, in this Mezhrabpom film, almost entirely avoided using pro-state rhetoric and images of Stalin. He was more interested in the adventure …

Print courtesy of The Russian State Documentary Film & Photo Archive, Krasnogorsk
by Wladimir Schnejderow, Jakow Kuper USSR 1933 65’