“Storm Nights” is the first  film created by Ivan Kavaleridze based on modern material. At that time Kavaleridze was already a well-known sculptor of two constructivist monuments to Artem in Bakhmut and Sviatohirsk. Also, he was an acknowledged master of historical cinema, and director of the legendary films “Downpours” (1929) and “Perekop” ( 1930).

“Storm Nights” is Kavaleridze’s last silent film, made under the undeniable influence of his colleagues at VUFKU, cinematographers Dzyga Vertov and Mikhail Kaufman. In an attempt to depict the new industrial pathos, the mechanization of labor, and the aesthetics of the machine, Kavaleridze uses the entire arsenal of artistic instruments of Soviet montage cinema available at that time.

The film was shot at the Odesa film factory of Ukrainfilm. “Storm Nights” tells a story about the forced “transformation” of a man, a peasant, during the industrialization of Ukraine, in parallel to the utopian project of conquering the Dnipro and enslaving the main Ukrainian river into concrete. But the film was never released on the big screen – the distribution verdict stated that “due to its frankly formalistic setting, the use of close-ups and medium shots, unexpected angles, editing tricks, etc., [the film] will be inaccessible to the mass audience.”

In 1932, the Ukrainian magazine “Kino” mentioned “Storm Nights” generally condemning formalism as a hostile to the proletariat phenomenon in Soviet cinema:

“The author applied his cultural abilities and created an exterior monumentality and, at the same time, “cold” beauty of his film. However he engrossed in cultural ornamentation and he forgot not only about other aspects of cinema, but also lost the plot of the film.”

The film is shown with a modern musical accompaniment.