Sergei Eisenstein’s ‘Battleship Potemkin’ (1925)

Often voted one of the ten greatest films ever made. Battleship Potemkin is a dramatization of the 1905 mutiny on the battleship “Prince Potemkin.” It focuses on the revolt by the battleship’s crew and the subsequent massacre of civilians who supported the sailors. Enraged with the deplorable conditions on board the armored cruiser Potemkin and raising the red flag of revolution, the sailors’ revolt becomes the rallying point for a Russian populace ground under the boot hells of the Czar’s Cossacks. When ruthless Russian cavalry arrives to crush the rebellion on the sandstone Odessa Steps, the most famous and most quoted film sequence in cinema history is born. Lenin hailed as the first proof that troops could be counted on to join the proletariat in overthrowing the old order. A technical masterpiece, Battleship Potemkin is Soviet cinema at its finest, and its montage editing techniques remain influential to this day. Silent Film with live accompaniment by Marta Waterman