S.M. Eisenstein: Selected Works: Writings, 1922-34

Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (1898-1948) was not only one of the world's greatest filmmakers; he was also one of the greatest theorists and teachers of film and one of the most original aesthetic thinkers of the twentieth century.

Up to now, however, only fragmentary selections from his writings have been available in English and little has been published that makes use of the wealth of material that has become available in Russian in recent years.

This new edition of Selected Writings will revolutionise knowledge of Eisenstein as a writer and thinker. Superbly translated from the definitive Russian text, and copiously annotated, it documents the complex course of Eisenstein's writings during the revolutionary years prior to the establishment of socialist realism as orthodox Soviet aesthetic doctrine.

This was also the period of his great silent masterpieces, Strike, The Battleship Potemkin, October and The General Line, and of his controversial visits to Hollywood and to Mexico.

The writings in this volume give a picture of Eisenstein the committed socialist artist, passionately engaged in the debates over the art forms of the future, but also of Eisenstein the humorist and Eisenstein the deeply innovative aesthetic thinker.