Described by historian Paul Rotha as "the epitome of the Soviet propaganda film, realized with extraordinary skill of technical achievement".
A live synthesizer performance by Colin Benders will accompany the premiere of the restored and full-length 110 minutes version of Oblomok Imperii (Fragment of an Empire) in November 2018.
The collaboration between the movie's director Ermlers and main actor Nikitin has been compared to oil and water. Nikitin was from an aristocratic background with an excellent education, and he was a confirmed admirer of Stanislavsky's Method. Ermler was a believer in Vsevolod Meyerhold's more external approach to performance and campaigned for slogans like "No feelings!" "No transformations!" "Down with Stanislavsky! "Long live Meyerhold!". In all, the two artists made four films together and by the end of shooting Oblomok Imperii, the two could no longer tolerate each other and never worked together again.
"Fridrikh Ermler was one of the greatest masters in the history of Soviet and world cinema," writes film scholar Peter Bagrov. "This was acknowledged by such filmmakers as Eisenstein, Chaplin, and Pabst ... Why he is unknown in the West is a mystery."
In a partnership between EYE Filmmuseum, Gosfilmofond of Russia, and the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, the 2018 restoration of Oblomok Imperii is based primarily on a 35mm print held at EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam. This restoration is supplemented with a 35mm nitrate print from the Swiss Cinémathèque, which provided the original Russian intertitles for Acts 2-6 as well as a small number of shots missing from the primary source. Titles absent from the Swiss print have been reproduced based on Russian censor records and are identified with the notation "2018" in the lower right corner. The restoration was supervised by senior curator, film historian, PhD and archivist Peter Bagrov.