The long, rich history of Russian films with a plot began on October 1908 when producer Alexander Drankov's released his movie "Stenka Razin." Although there had been short "actualities" showing real life events on the screen before then, Drankov's movie contained a storyline, that of the 17th century Cossack leader who fought against Russia's nobility and tsarist bureaucrats. The film's plot was taken from a section of a popular 1883 poem on the rebellion and Razin's rejection of a Persian princess. Although there is not much to the plot and the film dwells too much on the rebels crowded onto a small boat, Drankov pioneered a new narrative onto the screen that Russian audiences never had seen before. "Stenka Razin" served as an informal template for future Russian movies where large masses of people would be within the picture frame performing collective activities (think of Sergio Eisenstein's 1925 "Battleship Potemkin.")
Drankov's eclectic career also had him produce the world's first movie ad. He came up with the idea of placing a snapshot from the movie "Stenka" onto postcards to hand out. Several years later he became the first to produce the first Russian crime films. He ended up in the United States where he ran his own photo company in San Francisco before dying in 1949.
