Sergei Eisenstein: Films That Shook the World

February 9–April 21, 2018

This major retrospective celebrates one of cinema’s most pioneering and influential figures, whose theory of montage shaped the way films are made and understood.

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  • Alexander Nevsky

  • Battleship Potemkin

  • Strike

  • October

  • Ivan the Terrible, Part I

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Past Films

  • Out of the Vault: Sergei Eisenstein and His Contemporaries

    JUST ADDED!

    Friday, February 9 1:30 PM

    A panel of visiting scholars—all experts in the field of early Russian and Soviet cinema—joins Moscow-based scholar and archivist Peter Bagrov for this program of rare shorts and excerpts from the BAMPFA Soviet Cinema Collection.

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  • Battleship Potemkin

    Sergei Eisenstein
    USSR, 1925

    BAMPFA Collection

     

    Friday, February 9 7 PM
    Introduction by Peter Bagrov; Judith Rosenberg on Piano

    Eisenstein’s classic can be appreciated for “not only the perfection of its form, but the humanitarianism and enthusiasm that impregnated its revolutionary subject” (Georges Sadoul).

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  • Alexander Nevsky

    Sergei Eisenstein, Dmitri Vasiliev
    USSR, 1938

    Film to Table dinner follows the February 10 screening

    Saturday, February 10 4:30 PM
    Peter Bagrov in Person (February 10 screening only)

    Eisenstein’s first completed sound film has a score by Sergei Prokofiev to propel its tale of a thirteenth-century hero confronting foreign invaders.

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  • Ivan the Terrible, Part I

    Sergei Eisenstein
    USSR, 1944
    Sunday, February 11 2 PM
    Peter Bagrov in Person (February 11 screening only)

    In sixteenth-century Moscow, the newly crowned Czar Ivan battles both the nobility and the church in an effort to unify Russia. Scored by Sergei Prokofiev, Eisenstein’s painterly film is like a fresco come to life.

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  • Ivan the Terrible, Part II

    Sergei Eisenstein
    USSR, 1946/1958
    Sunday, February 11 4:30 PM
    Peter Bagrov in Person (February 11 screening only)

    The second part of Eisenstein’s unfinished trilogy follows Ivan’s return to the throne and his ruthless opposition to the schemes of the nobility to keep Russia divided among its princes and foreign interests.

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  • Alexander Nevsky

    Sergei Eisenstein, Dmitri Vasiliev
    USSR, 1938

    Film to Table dinner follows the February 10 screening

    Friday, February 16 4 PM
    Peter Bagrov in Person (February 10 screening only)

    Eisenstein’s first completed sound film has a score by Sergei Prokofiev to propel its tale of a thirteenth-century hero confronting foreign invaders.

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  • Strike

    Sergei Eisenstein
    USSR, 1925

    BAMPFA Collection Print / BAMPFA Student Committee Pick!

    Friday, February 23 7 PM
    Judith Rosenberg on Piano

    A strike by a group of factory workers and its brutal suppression form the backbone of Eisenstein’s agitprop masterpiece of ferocious montage.

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  • October

    Sergei Eisenstein
    USSR, 1928

    Digital Restoration

    Sunday, March 4 4:30 PM

    Made to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Russian Revolution, October fictionally recreates the revolution’s power and fury: so well, in fact, that some of its scenes have been reused in documentaries as the “real thing.”

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  • The General Line

    Sergei Eisenstein, Grigori Alexandrov
    USSR, 1929

    BAMPFA Collection

    Saturday, March 17 7:30 PM

    Eisenstein’s “Russian Gothic” tells of a peasant woman’s struggle against superstition, hostility, and greed in her attempt to form a collective.

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  • Que Viva Mexico!

    Sergei Eisenstein, Grigori Alexandrov
    USSR, 1931/1979

    Film to Table dinner follows

    Saturday, March 24 5 PM

    See Mexico through Eisenstein’s eyes in this compilation of footage shot in 1931, intended for an epic hybrid of documentary and fiction that the director never finished. With short Bezhin Meadow.

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  • Misery and Fortune of Women

    Eduard Tissé
    Switzerland, 1929
    Sunday, March 25 2 PM

     A treatise on the need for legal abortions, made in Switzerland by cinematographer Eduard Tisse and “supervised” by Eisenstein. With the poetic short Romance sentimentale.

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  • Ivan the Terrible, Part I

    Sergei Eisenstein
    USSR, 1944
    Saturday, April 21 6 PM
    Peter Bagrov in Person (February 11 screening only)

    In sixteenth-century Moscow, the newly crowned Czar Ivan battles both the nobility and the church in an effort to unify Russia. Scored by Sergei Prokofiev, Eisenstein’s painterly film is like a fresco come to life.

    View Details

  • Ivan the Terrible, Part II

    Sergei Eisenstein
    USSR, 1946/1958
    Saturday, April 21 8 PM
    Peter Bagrov in Person (February 11 screening only)

    The second part of Eisenstein’s unfinished trilogy follows Ivan’s return to the throne and his ruthless opposition to the schemes of the nobility to keep Russia divided among its princes and foreign interests.

    View Details