Shooting the Revolution: Sergei Eisenstein’s October (1928)

Described by the director as “the first embryonic step towards a totally new form of film expression,” October was and remains a film of multiple challenges. It is the last installment of Eisenstein’s historical-revolutionary film epic, which began with the films Strike (1924) and Battleship Potemkin (1925). After the international success of Battleship Potemkin, Eisenstein was commissioned to create a film celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. The director used the occasion to experiment with new ways of editing, which he conceived as intellectual montage, as well as to construct a new authoritative account of recent history by presenting a dramatic and dramatized chronicle of the events leading up to and during the October Revolution. While his version of history was ultimately rejected by the commissioning authorities and the film underwent multiple reediting, it remains an important milestone in film history as well as an early lesson in cinematic memory politics.

This screening is the first event in the SHOOTING THE REVOLUTION film series that is part of the WHAT’S LEFT program series organized by the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives, which aims to revisit the complex socialist ideological and visual legacy in the year marked by the centennial of the Bolshevik Revolution.

Wednesday, January 25, 2017. at 6 pm.

The screening is introduced by Dr. Oksana Sarkisova (Blinken OSA)

Free admission

Limited seats are available on a first come first served basis.