SCREENING AUGUST 2025

Russian director and film theorist Sergei Eisenstein made an immediate and definitive mark on the future of cinema with his first two features, both released in 1925, Strike and Battleship Potemkin. Commissioned as part of the twentieth anniversary celebrations of the Russian Revolution, Potemkin is a dramatisation of the events surrounding a famous navy mutiny. Although intended as a mere propaganda film, Eisenstein used it to test his theories of montage, believing that careful editing would elicit the desired emotional responses from audiences. This inarguable
totem of world cinema is here presented with an accompanying score by Pet Shop Boys.

Notes by Kevin Coyne