With October Sergei Eisenstein, the epic poet of the Soviet cinema, dealt with the shifts of power in the government after the 1917 Revolution, the entrance on the scene of Lenin, and the struggle between the Bolsheviks and their political and military foes.

Eisenstein’s third feature, after Strike and Battleship Potemkin, was commissioned by the Soviet government to honour the tenth anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Eisenstein had nearly unlimited resources placed at his disposal, including the Soviet army and navy and the run of Leningrad’s Winter Palace for several months. Basing the shooting script on voluminous documentary material from the era and on John Reed’s book Ten Days That Shook the World, his startling re-creation of the events of 1917 is both a sweeping historical epic of vast scale and a magnificent monument to his fascination with intellectual montage.

Presented in partnership with Bristol Festival of Ideas with support from Bristol Radical Film Festival.

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