🎞 126 years ago, on 22 January 1898, Sergey Eisenstein was born, one of the world’s leading film directors, whose contributions to cinema theories still remain the subject of great interest and debate today.

He is known throughout the world as the “father of montage cinema” having introduced this new kind of film language as early as 1924.

📹 In his first full-length feature film “Strike” (1925) he showed a group of factory workers shot down, with the scenes of their deaths intercut with the depiction of cattle at the slaughter. Parallel images had a serious emotional impact on viewers.

👉 Eisenstein’s most famous film “Battleship Potemkin” (1925), the story of one of the tragic episodes of the 1905 Russian Revolution, remains one of the most fundamental landmarks of the cinema. Its famous massacre on the Odessa Steps has been quoted so many times in other films (Brian De Palma’s “The Untouchables,” Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather”, Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglorious Bastards”) that it's likely many viewers will have seen the copies before they see the original.

☝️ Eisenstein believed that film should educate rather than just entertain. When on a tour in Hollywood he realized that his artistic approach to cinema was incompatible with that of American studios focusing on profit. None of his three projects were put into production.

#russiancinema #russiaculture #eisenstein #cinematography

🎞 101 years ago, on 30 January 1923, Leonid Gaidai was born, Soviet-Russian film director, who became referred to as “the king of Soviet comedy”.

🌟 The future beloved director was a WW2 veteran. On February 1942, he was enrolled to the Red Army, originally served in Mongolia, but then finished sergeant courses and was sent to the Kalinin Front. He participated in recon missions, and was decorated with the medal "For Battle Merit".

After the war, he studied at the Irkutsk District Drama Theatre's studio school, and subsequently attended the Moscow Institute of Cinematography, completing his studies in 1955. Many of his movies, such as “Kidnapping, Caucasian Style!”, “Twelve Chairs”, are classics, quoted by people without even knowing the provenance of this or that line.

🎬 Watch the 1971 film “The Twelve Chairs” directed by Leonid Gaidai at the LINK

#RussianCulture #RussianCinema

📆 92 years ago, on 4 April 1932, Andrei Tarkovsky was born, a Russian filmmaker, writer and film theorist. Among his best-known works as film director are feature films “Ivan’s Childhood” (1962), “Andrei Rublev” (1966), “Solaris” (1972), “Mirror” (1975), “Stalker” (1979), “Nostalghia” (1983) and “The Sacrifice” (1986). Throughout his lifetime Tarkovsky was awarded prizes of Venice, Cannes, Moscow film festivals, BAFTA.

Several of his works are enlisted as the best films of all time.

🎬Tarkovsky’s influence is seen in modern movies. “The Revenant” (2015) containing citations and borrowings from Tarkovsky’s works is the most up-to-date example.

#RussianCulture #RussianCinema #USSR #SovietCinema #OutstandingRussians #andreitarkovsky #ivanschildhood #russiancinema