Firebird Videos, Audios & Books
St. Innocent Monastic Community
Redford, Michigan

IV. VIDEOS in Russian

 

VR-7.  THE CHURCH:
Orthodox Church Life in Russia TodaywpeB.jpg (2503 bytes)
VHS Videotape    1 hr.    Made in Russia in 1987.   ISBN 1-881211-32-0    
PRICE: $24.95
DESCRIPTION:

This is an extremely fascinating exploration of various aspects of the present-day life of the Orthodox Church in Russia, as the Church was seeking to re-establish itself on the eve of its Millennium celebration.  The video considers the role of the Church in traditional Russian life, and the disruption of that vital element of Russian culture by the Communists, and their desecration and destruction of holy places. 

Many very interesting things are depicted, including:

bullet building a new village church;
bullet raising children according to Orthodox traditions in Vladimir;
bullet the Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra Men's Monastery;
bullet extensive interviews with iconographer, Priest-Monk Fr. Zenon, and showing him at work at his home in the Pskov-Pechory Monastery and at the St. Daniel Monastery in Moscow, where he did much iconographic work as the new Church Center was being reconstructed;
bullet life at the Pskov-Pechory Monastery;
bullet the Theophany procession [krestnii khod] and open-air Great Blessing of Water in Suzdal;
bullet reconstruction of the Danilov Monastery in Moscow;
bullet a very lengthy segment (15 mins.) on life at the Piukhtitsy Dormition Women's Monastery;
bullet Metropolitan Aleksei at St. Xenia's tomb;
bullet and the Holy Friday and Pascha processions at the Pochaev Monastery.

Besides being of such great interest to Americans, for recent Russian emigrés in America, who grew up under the Communists, and who absorbed the Communists' negative attitude towards the Church, this video also can serve as a corrective influence to the Communist propaganda about the Orthodox Faith, potentially enabling them to claim their rightful inheritance of their Russian Orthodox Faith. 

[Russian production. In Russian.]