Earth is the fourth and last silent film by the Ukrainian director Alexander Dovzhenko, and is considered his masterpiece. Its story is very simple: the young peasants of a Ukrainian village want to set up collective farms; the kulaks (rich landowners) try to protect their land. But, as Jay Leyda points out, “this story scarcely hints of all the qualities and passages that have made Earth one of the few acknowledged classics of the Soviet and world cinema.” Dovzhenko is concerned not with plot, but with the lyrical expression of a universal theme - the life cycle of man, which he believes is bound inextricably to the land - developed through a constant juxtaposition and intertwining of images of life and death.