Sergei M. Eisenstein - Drawings (1961)

Рисунки. Dessins. Drawings.
by Sergei M. Eisenstein

Hardcover: 228 pages
Publisher: Publishing House "Iskustvo" (Art) (May 30, 1961)
Language: Russian, English, French
Product Dimensions: 62 x 94.8

Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein was a Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, a pioneer in the theory and practice of montage. He is noted in particular for his silent films Strike (1925), Battleship Potemkin (1925) and October (1928), as well as the historical epics Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible (1944, 1958).

Eisenstein's book presents his drawings and sketches for his films of different years as well as trilingual texts: essays by Y. Pimenov ("The Drawings of Eisenstein"), Olga Aisenstat ("Eisenstein the Graphic Artist"), Gennady Myasnikov ("Director's View of the Film") and Eisenstein himself ("How I Learned to Draw" and "A Few Words about My Drawings").

Sergei Eisenstein & Grigory Alexandrov - Frauennot - Frauenglück AKA Misery and Fortune of Woman (1929)

Description:
This short film shows the contrast between the good conditions in which a rich woman makes a abortion and the miserable and dangerous condition in which a poor woman has to do an abortion.

Oleg Kovalov - Sergei Eisenstein. Avtobiografiya AKA Sergei Eisenstein: Autobiography (1996)

Quote:
The great Russian film director Sergei Eisenstein, whose Potemkin, Alexander Nevsky, and Ivan the Terrible stand as masterpieces of world cinema, is the subject of this eccentric and puzzling production. Though based on memoirs Eisenstein wrote before his death in 1948, most of this film is barely a documentary at all, but rather a composite of images, many of which are fascinating and arresting. Eisenstein himself was known for startling and memorable images (perhaps the most famous of which is the shot of the baby carriage rolling down the steps in Potemkin), so memorializing him with clips from his own films interspersed with readings from his memoirs seems somewhat appropriate. But the voice-over in Russian (with English subtitles) is quite sparse, and at times the images onscreen, which include clips from Buster Keaton films and Hollywood musicals from the 1930s, are utterly mystifying.. --Robert J. McNamara

Sergei M. Eisenstein - Bronenosets Potyomkin AKA Battleship Potemkin [2005 Restored Version] (1925)

The Battleship Potemkin (1925), accompanied by a new arrangement of Edmund Meisel’s orchestral score, which Eisenstein himself authorized for the film’s Berlin premiere in 1926. The Battleship Potemkin was recognized from the start as a landmark work both for its innovative use of montage and for its sheer power as propaganda. In particular, the “Odessa steps” sequence is arguably the single most famous and widely quoted passage in the history of film. But in a sense The Battleship Potemkin has been the victim of its own effectiveness. Reissued over the years in various censored and reedited versions, Eisenstein’s great vision has not been seen for several decades in anything like what the director likely intended. This new version, overseen by the film archivist and historian Enno Patalas, attempts to reconstruct, as closely as possible, the film as it was presented in Moscow during its initial release.

Sergei M. Eisenstein - Sergei Eisenstein and Montage ()

14 pages about Sergei Eisenstein and Montage.

Sergei M. Eisenstein - The psychology of composition (1988)

'Watson and Scotland Yard always work along the line of direct
logic, Sherlock Holmes works not by logic, but by dialectics'. This
dialectics, in its turn, draws on 'the whole fund of prelogical,
sensuous thought' that 'serves as a fund of the language of form' that
Eisenstein defines as 'readable expressiveness'. Eisenstein's
elaborate study of a method of art rooted in 'the twilight stage of
primitive thought' moves from folk tales to Shakespeare, Balzac,
Gogol, Tolstoi, Dostoevsky, and Mayakovsky, to come eventually to
the detective story, 'the most effective genre of literature' and 'the
most naked expression of bourgeois society's fundamental ideas on
property', as it is told by Poe, Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, Ellery
Queen, and Hitchcock in Spellbound.
Writing while he was making Ivan, Eisenstein opens up, in his
characteristic manner, a whole area of thinking on 'the psychology
of composition'. Published in English for the first time, these lectures
and lecture notes have been assembled and translated by Jay Leyda
and Alan Upchurch.

Sergei M. Eisenstein - La Destrucción de Oaxaca (1931)

Description: Footage of the aftermath of the January 14 1931 Earthquake in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Sergei M. Eisenstein - Dnevnik Glumova AKA Glumov's Diary (1923)

The first film from Eisenstein.

From allmovie

" Eisenstein's interest in film began with an appreciation of the work of D.W. Griffith, whose editing style influenced him in the production of his first cinematic endeavor, the 1923 five-minute newsreel parody Dnevnik Glumova. A stint with Lev Kuleshov's film workshop followed, as did an increasing fascination with the burgeoning avant-garde."

Sergei M. Eisenstein - Bezhin lug AKA Bezhin Meadow (1937)

This short film is only still-image restoration of an unfinished film.

What is one to make of Bezhin Meadow? What is one to make of Sergei Eisenstein? The questions are in many ways the same as this film maudit and its maker are in much the same boat these days – lost to history both artistic and political. Filmed between 1936 and 1937 Bezhin Meadow was to signal Eisenstein's return to the Soviet fold after his sojourn in America and the debacle of Que Viva Mexico. What resulted was an even greater debacle in that no sooner had the film neared completion than it was attacked and banned from view – with Eisenstein contributing to the banning by penning an essay in which he 'confessed' to the 'mistakes' of Bezhin Meadow. Finally adding injury to insult, the sole surviving print of Bezhin Meadow was destroyed – supposedly in a bombing raid during World War II, but just as likely burned outright. Then around 1968 a 'reconstruction' of the film was engineered when splices from the editing table, saved by Eisenstein's wife, Pera Attasheva, were discovered. Cobbled together with a track of Prokoviev music, intertitles fashioned from the original script and cutting continuity and a brief spoken introduction, it exists today as a 35-minute silent film-cum-slide show. Of obvious interest to film scholars, and doubtless pleasing to those who share Roland Barthes' preference for still images over moving ones, Bezhin Meadow once again begs the question of Eisenstein's actual value – once the myth of the Great-Individual-Artist-Suffering-at-the-Hands-of-Stalin is scraped away. For all the ups and downs of his career Eisenstein was always Stalin's favorite filmmaker, never meeting the fate of his teacher Vsevolod Meyerhold. Internationally celebrated, a linchpin of Soviet propaganda, photographed more than any other director in the history of the cinema, Eisenstein was a Movie Star – first, last and always.

Sergei M. Eisenstein - Ivan Groznyy I (Иван Грозный) AKA Ivan the Terrible Part 1 (1944)

From Turner Classic Movies:
On the day of his coronation as the first Tsar of Russia, the former archduke of Moscow, Ivan IV (Nikolai Cherkasov), finds himself inheriting a deeply troubled empire. The Russian people are divided into estranged clans including the Tartars and the aristocratic boyars, led by the evil, black-cloaked princess and Ivan's aunt Euphrosinia Staritskaya (Serafima Birman).

V. Chubisov - A Montage Lesson: Sergei Eisenstein

Description: This is not Eisenstein's film, but a series of montage lessons by V. Chubisov using Eisenstein's films for examples...

levchin specifies

Quote:
that the filmmaker is Vadim CHUBASOV, not Chubisov, who taught at the Kiev Theater/TV/Film Institute for many years, and died recently. Moreover, the title of this film is Lessons in Editing, not A Montage Lesson.
No one seems to know when it was made. Judging by the video style it must be the '80s. Clearly this is an instructional film, commissioned and produced by the Karpenko-Kary film school in Kiev.

Credits, Production and Release Information
Director, Scenario: Vadim Chubasov
Comissioned and produced by: Karpenko-Kary film school (Kiev)

Sergei M. Eisenstein & Grigori Aleksandrov - Staroye i novoye (Старое и новое) AKA Old and New (1929)

REVIEW by Jonathan Rosenbaum (from The Chicago Reader):

This is the most neglected of Sergei Eisenstein's features, his last completed silent picture (1929), also known as The Old and the New. It's a bucolic epic about the Soviet struggle to collectivize agricultural production, and it's far from his least interesting or exciting film, though some critics have made it sound that way by noting that the most famous sequence involves a cream separator. For the record, it is a thrilling sequence--part of Kenneth Anger's Eaux d'artifice is modeled directly after it--but it's far from the only thing this rich, poetic, and sometimes quite funny film has to offer. Recommended.

Sergei M. Eisenstein - Ivan Groznyy II: Boyarsky zagovor (Иван Грозный. Боярский заговор) AKA Ivan the Terrible Part 2 (1958)

His wife dead from poisoning and his chief warrior, Kurbsky, defected to the Poles, Ivan is lonely as he pursues a unified Russia with no foreign occupiers. Needing friendship, he brings to court Kolychev, now Philip the monk, and makes him metropolitan bishop of Moscow. Philip, however, takes his cues from the boyars and tries to bend Ivan to the will of the church. Ivan faces down Philip and lets loose his private force, the Oprichniks, on the boyars. Led by the Tsar's aunt, Euphrosyne, the boyers plot to assassinate Ivan and enthrone her son, Vladimir. At a banquet, Ivan mockingly crowns Vladimir and sends him in royal robes into the cathedral where the assassin awaits

Sergei M. Eisenstein - ¡Que Viva Mexico! AKA Da zdravstvuyet Meksika! (1979)

Da zdravstvuyet Meksika! AKA ¡Que viva Mexico!

Having revolutionized film editing through such masterworks of montage as Potemkin and Strike, Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein emigrated west in hopes of testing the capabilities of the American film industry. Quickly ostracized from Hollywood, Eisenstein, Grigory Alexandrov and photographer Eduard Tisse (at the urging of author Upton Sinclair) wandered south of the border where they began filming a highly stylized documentary on the people and volatile social climate of Mexico. Unfortunately, a lack of funds prohibited the film's completion and the famed director was unable to edit the film. In 1979, by referring to Eisenstein's extensive notes and sketches, Alexandrov assembled the most definitive version of the film; as close to Eisenstein's vision as one is ever likely to see.

Sergei M. Eisenstein - Aleksander Nevsky (Александр Невский) (1938)

From Criterion Collection:

Eisenstein drew on history, Russian folk narratives, and the techniques of Walt Disney to create this broadly painted epic of Russian resilience. This story of Teutonic knights vanquished by Prince Alexander Nevsky’s tactical brilliance resonated deeply with a Soviet Union concerned with the rise of Nazi Germany. Widely imitated—most notably by Laurence Olivier’s Battle of Agincourt re-creation for Henry V —the Battle on the Ice scene remains one of the most famous audio-visual experiments in film history, perfectly blending action with the rousing score of Sergei Prokofiev.

Grigori Aleksandrov & Sergei M. Eisenstein - Oktyabr AKA October AKA Ten Days That Shook the World (1928)

Description: Expanding on his editing experiments in Battleship Potemkin (1925), Sergei Eisenstein melded documentary realism with narrative metaphor to depict the pivotal events of the Russian Revolution in October (1927). Commissioned to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution, Eisenstein focused on a few key events from February 1917 to October 1917. Underlining the symbolic importance of those episodes, Eisenstein constructed October as an elaborate "intellectual montage," deriving meaning from the metaphorical or symbolic relationships between shots. Drawing out narrative time through cutting, Eisenstein turns an opening drawbridge into a sign of the divisive struggle in St. Petersburg. Similarly exaggerating the time that it takes provisional leader Kerensky to climb a palatial staircase, and intercutting shots of Kerensky with a Napoleon statue and a mechanical peacock, Eisenstein satirically reveals Kerensky's imperial hubris and vanity. Having done extensive research for accuracy, Eisenstein also staged mass battles, particularly the storming of the Winter Palace, with thousands of extras, including the Soviet army. Before October's release, however, Josef Stalin's ascent to power required Eisenstein to edit out all references to Stalin rival Trotsky. Neither the Soviet public nor the Soviet leaders cared for the finished film; the government accused Eisenstein of "formalist excess." An edited version of the film was released in the U.S. using the title of John Reed's book, Ten Days That Shook the World. While the film's whole is not as great as its parts, the abstract power and narrative innovation of its greatest sequences still render it a seminal work in the development of film form.
~Lucia Bozzola allmovie

Sergei M. Eisenstein - Bronenosets Potyomkin (Броненосец Потёмкин) aka Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Description: Based on the historical events the movie tells the story of a riot at the battleship Potemkin. What started as a protest strike when the crew was given rotten meat for dinner ended in a riot. The sailors raised the red flag and tried to ignite the revolution in their home port Odessa.