 Born in Riga, Latvia, into the family of a prominent architect and engineer;  Graduated from the Institute of Civil Engineering in Saint Petersburg;  In 1920, joined the Proletkult (“proletarian culture”) Central Workers’ Theatre in Moscow;  Studied in the School for Stage Direction under Vsevolod Meyerhold in early 1920s.

 Strike 1923  Battleship Potemkin (pronounced Potyomkin) 1925  October (Ten Days that Shook the World) 1927  The General Line (The Old and the New) 1929  Que viva Mexico! (unfinished – abandoned 1932)  Bezhin Meadow (1935 – undistributed, destroyed)  Alexander Nevsky 1938  Ivan the Terrible Pt. I 1944  Ivan the Terrible Pt II (finished 1946, released only in 1958)

 Studied under VsevolodMeyerhold ( )  antirealist theatre  theatre of the grotesque  clowning, acrobatics  abstract, "constructivist" sets

 Etchings of Italian actors by Jacques Callot, a French artist( ).  Masks: Pantalone,Arlekino, Dottore, etc.  Grotesque features, expressive postures and movements.

 “Montage of attractions”: cinema compared to theatre and circus;  Eisenstein’s first experiment in film: grotesque intermezzo inserted in play

 Masks: factory managers, spies  Serious heroes: revolutionaries  Dark comedy, the revolutionaries are suppressed.

 Films as "moving frescoes" – the influence of Diego Rivera;  Numerous quotes from the visual arts – e.g., from Francisco Goya;  Icons in Ivan The Terrible;  Eisenstein was an artist himself – created sketches for characters and individual shots;  Constructivist imagery.