As part of the public program for the exhibition Proof, Garage invites visitors to the screening of October by the Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, with an introduction by one of the leading experts in Eisenstein’s work Naum Kleiman, who has taken part in the film’s restoration.
Shot for the anniversary of the Russian Revolution, October is devoted to the events that took place between the February and October revolutions of 1917. For Eisenstein, this was another opportunity to develop a new cinematic language, building on the success of his earlier Strike (1924) and The Battleship Potemkin (1925). In his Montage of Attractions, published a year before his director’s debut, Eisenstein discusses the possibility of manipulating the viewer’s emotions through liberal juxtaposition of independent shots. Having experimented with such visual collisions in his first works, in October he took montage to a new level, editing seemingly unconnected shots in a way that allowed him to create filmic metaphors and symbols.
October premiered at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow on March 14, 1928. On April 2, a German version of the film, which Eisenstein produced in collaboration with Edmund Meisel, was screened in Berlin.
Garage will be screening the full version of the film restored in 2012 by Munich Film Museum in collaboration with ARTE and film historian Naum Kleiman. The film will be screened with music by Edmund Meisel reconstructed by contemporary composer by Bernd Thewes.