PSL Presents: Battleship Potemkin
After placing the class on the honor system, our professor signaled for his TA to start the projector, and proceeded to punch out for the day. It was a luminescent, end-of-semester afternoon, the kind where students would rather be anywhere but trapped inside a stuffy classroom watching the Russian Revolution of 1905 come to life in silent, scratchy, 16mm splendor. It unraveled at a staggering pace, unlike anything I had experienced on a screen, leaving me so transfixed that I must have overlooked the steady exodus of students. By the time the 66 minutes had passed, only the projectionist and I remained. During its Frankensteinian infancy, D.W. Griffith gave the cinema its voice, while over in the editing room, Sergei Eisenstein’s unique method of CPR (Cossack Propaganda Rhythm), gave the celluloid ribbon its pulse. I taught Battleship Potemkin nine times (or more) a year for 11 years. Unlike The Bicycle Thief (which I taught myself to abhor), there’s always something new to discover in Eisenstein’s boundless energy. Every year or two, I make it my business to order up a slab of maggoty meat and hop in a swinging hammock. — Scott Marks