56 minutes; color & b/w; Russian with English subtitles; digital video; Canada, 2007. Dir.: T. Lahusen, T. McDonald, A. Gershtein.

A love affair with Komsomolsk-on-Amur, in the Russian Far East, its struggle with the past, and its hope for the future through the eyes of young people, aging Communists, former labor-camp prisoners, and the local avant-garde theater.

20 minutes; color & b/w; Russian with English subtitles; digital video; Canada, 2008 (new cut). Dir.: T. McDonald; camera: A. Gershtein & T. Lahusen.

Women remember a major uprising of 1930 against the collectivization of agriculture in their villages in Riazan province.

59 minutes; color & b/w; Russian with English subtitles; digital video; Canada, December 2008. Dir.: T. Lahusen, T. McDonald, A. Gershtein; camera: A. Gershtein; original music: Timofeyev Ensemble.

A film about Riazan photographer Evgeny Kashirin (1949-2007), who recorded a poignant visual, social, and cultural history of his time and place. A triptych of his work shows a dying rural life, a train crawling from town to town, and the story of a man who traded his wife for a marble statue of Judith.

Directed by Gulzat Egemberdieva. Producers: Thomas Lahusen, Sergei Kapterev, Omurbek Egemberdiev. Camera: Thomas Lahusen & Alexander Gershtein. Color & b/w. HD ,16:9; 19 minutes; Kyrgyz & Russian; English & Russian subtitles. Canada, April 2010.

Former members of the Communist Youth League (Komsomol) from Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Ingushetia, and Russia gather to sing their songs in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan in the Summer of 2009

Directed by Thomas Lahusen, Gulzat Egemberdieva, and André Loersch. Digital HD 16:9 & archival footage; color & b/w; 47 minutes; Kyrgyz and Russian, English or French subtitles; Canada, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, September 2010.

The film chronicles the ever-deepening chaos, into which Kyrgyzstan, a small, land-locked country in Central Asia, plunged after a popular revolt that led to the toppling of president Bakiev and his lan in April 2010, culminating with large-scale inter-ethnic violence in June 2010.

A film by Thomas Lahusen and Olga Bakich; 35 minutes; color & b/w; Chinese, English, German, Russian dialogues; English subtitles; digital HD 16:9 & archival footage.

Film made for the international conference “Global Challenge and Regional Response: Early-Twentieth-Century Northeast China’s Encounters with the World,” held in June 2009 in Harbin, China. Harbin with its foreign – mainly Russian – architectural remnants of the early twentieth century, and its contemporary Chinese echoes, occupies an important place in the film. Canada, China, 2011.

Dir.: Gulzat Egemberdieva, Thomas Lahusen and Lilia Topouzova; camera: Thomas Lahusen & A. Gershtein. Digital HD 16:9; color; 12 minutes; English and Russian, English subtitles.

The encounter in a trendy “dining in the dark” restaurant in Toronto between a blind waiter and a reporter from Central Asia.

30 min.; color & b/w; Kyrgyz with Russian subtitles; digitial video. Dir. Talant Dzhumabaev, camera: Ernis Mamytov.

A film about the members of a Kyrgyz clan, who left their homeland during the 1920s. to escape Soviet rule and now live in Eastern Turkey.