Battleship Potemkin

Director: Sergei Eisenstein
Cast: Aleksandr Antonov, Vladimir Barsky, Grigori Aleksandrov, Ivan Bobrov 
1925, 75’, Soviet Union, black & white, silent with Turkish subtitles

Screened in Turkey for the first time in 1927, Battleship Potemkin was produced by Mosfilm, the oldest and largest film studio of Russia and Europe, and directed by Sergei Eisenstein, the great Russian director who for many was the wunderkind of cinema. The film, the second in Eisenstein’s filmography, was based on a true story known as the Mutiny on the Battleship Potemkin. Using a mostly realistic but occasionally romantic approach, the film tells the epic story the crew of the Battleship Potemkin in Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in 1905; the crew revolts against the unbearable living conditions on board inflicted by the navy officers of the Czarist regime, and take over command. The film aimed at socialist propaganda, but was groundbreaking for the development of cinema in terms of the technical innovations of the director and the formal choices that enriched the narration.