International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest

Extract

Sergei Eisenstein was a revolutionary Soviet film director and revolutionary filmmaker born in 1898 to a well-off family. Eisenstein's father, Mikhail Osipovich Eisenstein, was an architect of Jewish descent, who converted to Orthodox Christianity. His mother, Julia Ivanovna Konetskaya, the daughter of a wealthy contractor, came from a Russian Orthodox Christian family. In 1915 Sergei started studying engineering. His studies were interrupted in 1917 when he was drafted into the army and left for the front. There he started drawing caricatures, costumes, and gestures for commedia dell'arte. There is little record of how Eisenstein was affected by the events of October 1917; however, in the spring of 1918 he volunteered for the Red Army, whereas his father joined the Whites and subsequently immigrated to Germany. While in the military, Eisenstein again managed to combine his service as a technician with study of theater, philosophy, psychology, and linguistics. He staged and performed in several productions, but most importantly he wrote texts for the “agitation train,” where his future cameraman Edouard Tisse worked and Dziga Vertov edited material. In the same year he became a head of the mise-en-scene in the Proletkult Theater in Moscow. In 1923 he directed a sketch of Sergei Tretiakov, Gas Mask , that was staged in the gas factory. In the same year, Eisenstein's first short ... log in or subscribe to read full text