In Focus: Eisenstein and His Contemporaries

January 17–May 2, 2018

Explore the work of celebrated Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein in the context of his times with screenings and lectures by Eisenstein expert Anne Nesbet.

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  • October

  • Battleship Potemkin

  • The General Line

  • Earth

  • Bed and Sofa

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • still of crowd on horseback from Yuri Tarich's film Wings of a Serf

    Wings of a Serf

    • Wednesday, May 2 3:10 PM
    Yuri Tarich
    USSR, 1926

    BAMPFA collection print

    Directed by the Belarusian Yuri Tarich, this extraordinary 1926 Soviet silent film set in the sixteenth century was influential in the direction of Eisenstein’s two-part Ivan the Terrible (1944-46).

  • Ivan the Terrible, Part II

    • Wednesday, April 25 3:10 PM
    Sergei Eisenstein
    USSR, 1946/1958

    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.

    Lecture by Anne Nesbet

  • Ivan the Terrible, Part I

    • Wednesday, April 18 3:10 PM
    Sergei Eisenstein
    USSR, 1944

    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.

    Lecture by Anne Nesbet

  • Alexander Nevsky

    • Wednesday, April 11 3:10 PM
    Sergei Eisenstein, Dmitri Vasiliev
    USSR, 1938

    BAMPFA Student Committee Pick!

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

    Lecture by Anne Nesbet

  • Que Viva Mexico!

    • Wednesday, April 4 3:10 PM
    Sergei Eisenstein, Grigori Alexandrov
    USSR, 1931/1979

    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.

    Lecture by Anne Nesbet

  • Earth

    • Wednesday, March 21 3:10 PM
    Alexander Dovzhenko
    USSR, 1930

    BAMPFA Collection

    Ukrainian villagers take on their rich overlords in order to collectivize in this startlingly poetic work from the legendary Ukrainian director Alexander Dovzhenko.

    Lecture by Anne Nesbet; Judith Rosenberg on Piano

  • The General Line

    • Wednesday, March 14 3:10 PM
    Sergei Eisenstein, Grigori Alexandrov
    USSR, 1929

    BAMPFA Collection

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

    Lecture by Anne Nesbet; Judith Rosenberg on Piano

  • Bed and Sofa

    • Wednesday, March 7 3:10 PM
    Abram Room
    USSR, 1927

    Digital Restoration

    An army veteran moves in with his old buddy and his wife in a crowded Moscow flat—with predictably disastrous results—in this daring early Soviet film.

    Lecture by Anne Nesbet; Judith Rosenberg on Piano

  • October

    • Wednesday, February 28 3:10 PM
    Sergei Eisenstein
    USSR, 1928

    Digital Restoration

    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.”

    Lecture by Anne Nesbet; Judith Rosenberg on Piano

  • The End of St. Petersburg

    • Wednesday, February 21 3:10 PM
    Vsevolod Pudovkin
    USSR, 1927

    Archival Print

    An exploited peasant suffers through the horrors of war and capital before awakening to the possibility of revolution in Vsevolod Pudovkin’s epic made to mark the tenth anniversary of the Russian Revolution. With clips from Esfir Shub’s The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty.

    Lecture by Anne Nesbet; Judith Rosenberg on Piano

  • The New Babylon

    • Wednesday, February 14 3:10 PM
    Grigori Kozintsev, Leonid Trauberg
    USSR, 1929

    BAMPFA Collection

    Originally banned for its excess and aestheticism, and inspired by Impressionists like Monet and Degas, this visually magnificent avant-garde extravaganza tracks a shopgirl and a soldier in the 1871 Paris Commune.

    Lecture by Anne Nesbet; Discussion with Peter Bagrov

  • Sergei Eisenstein

    Out of the Vault: Sergei Eisenstein and His Contemporaries

    • Friday, February 9 1:30 PM

    JUST ADDED!

    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.

  • Battleship Potemkin

    • Wednesday, February 7 3:10 PM
    Sergei Eisenstein
    USSR, 1925

    BAMPFA Collection

    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).

    Lecture by Anne Nesbet; Discussion with Peter Bagrov; Judith Rosenberg on Piano

  • Strike

    • Wednesday, January 31 3:10 PM
    Sergei Eisenstein
    USSR, 1925

    BAMPFA Collection Print / BAMPFA Student Committee Pick!

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

    Lecture by Anne Nesbet; Judith Rosenberg on Piano

  • The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks

    • Wednesday, January 24 3:10 PM
    Lev Kuleshov
    USSR, 1924

    A fearful American and his cowboy bodyguard find themselves in over their heads in Soviet Russia in Lev Kuleshov’s frantic, absurdist comedy. With Dziga Vertov’s Kino-Pravda No. 21.

    Lecture by Anne Nesbet

  • A Life for a Life

    • Wednesday, January 17 3:10 PM
    Evgenii Bauer
    Russia, 1916

    A wealthy matriarch juggles her two daughters (one adopted) against a merchant and a dashing prince in this chamber melodrama from one of silent Russian cinema’s great stylists, Evgenii Bauer.

    Lecture by Anne Nesbet; Bruce Loeb on Piano