CLASSIC: BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN by Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein

Everyone knows this film classic of revolutionary quality. It has earned its place in history as one of the most moving, contemporary visual documents of Russia. The talk is of BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN, a film depicting the atmosphere (and perils) of the Russian Revolution like no other. A groundbreaking film. It was created by a man who was not only a film director and teacher of film-making, but also a quite remarkable writer: Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein. He is internationally renowned for BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN in particular. The film was screened in cinemas so often, that the wear and tear on the film material had given reason for concern.

In order to save Eisenstein's most important film and ensure its continued availability to the general public, the German Federal Cultural Foundation decided to initiate a restoration project. Under the overall direction of the Deutsche Kinemathek Foundation, the film was completed and restored. The Russian film version's restoration followed specifications given by Enno Patalas and was supported by the German Federal Archives, Department Film Archives.



The score composed by Edmund Meisel from Berlin played a major role in the film's success. The music for Eisenstein's BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN was his masterpiece, and also his first project as a film composer. It established his fame which extends beyond his lifetime and gave the history of the silent era a lingering legend. Meisel's “Battleship” score had been lost for decades and was not rediscovered until late, prompting testimonies as to it having created a second miracle on top of the original “Potemkin film miracle”: a musical creation which merged with Eisenstein's ingenious achievement into a single organic entity, and appeared to be inseparable and indispensable for a cinema experience of BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN.

80 years after the Russian premiere, the restored and completed version of the film with the rearranged score by Edmund Meisel had its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival 2005, and is now bookable through Europe`s Finest on DCP for territories throughout Europe (with the exception of German-speaking territories, UK and Poland).

BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN – the film that critics elected as the best in history again and again. The astonishing thing is that the BATTLESHIP takes the audience's breath away even today: Eisenstein's boldness in the film's montage, the editing rhythm, the brilliant lighting direction, the contrast between chaos and elegy, and above all, the social confrontation – the revolutionaries with the courage of lions, and the massacre committed by czarist troops in the sequence on the steps – this is spectacular cinema on rebellion, destruction and the revolutionaries' will to succeed. In 1926, German film critic Herbert Ihering in Berlin, the city where the film's fame was established before it spread worldwide, passed the following judgement: “If all documents of the past twenty years where lost, and only the BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN was saved, then one would have preserved a work of a man which is valid and bears testimony, such as the Iliad, such as the Nibelungenlied.”

BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN will be screened at the La Rochelle International Film Festival (27.06. – 06.07.2014) within the series „The golden age of Soviet silent films”.

The film is available on DCP with English and French subtitles through Europe's Finest.
We look forward to your booking or to meeting you in Cannes.

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