Documentary portrait of Dziga Vertov, father of documentary cinema.

“The Magic Beam” is a film essay woven together from newsreels and documentary material from different decades, fragments of hundreds of non-fiction and fiction Soviet films of the 1910s-1960s.

Documentary filmed on May 30-June 3 1990 in USA during Mikhail Gorbachev's American voyage to take part in Washington Summit visit and sign bilateral Soviet-American Chemical Weapons Accord.

The film exposes the subversive activities of imperialist intelligence services against the USSR and socialist countries.