The Devizes Festival Film

Groundbreaking and highly influential Russian propaganda film that deals with the mutiny on the Battleship Potemkin in 1905 and the massacre that ensued.  The sailors aboard the Potemkin revolt when they are presented with maggot-infested meat.  When a firing squad is ordered to shoot them, one sailor steps forward to question them as to which side they are on and chaos follows during which he is shot.  After a successful mutiny the ship sails to Odessa and the sailors erect a shrine to their martyred comrade.  As crowds form to cheer the sailors, Czarist soldiers appear and shoot them down on the Odessa steps in one of the most famous and copied film scenes of all time.  By using semi-symbolic characters and montage editing, juxtaposing images of violence and innocence and using techniques now more commonly used in advertising, Eisenstein made an enduringly stunning and emotional work of indisputable historical and cinematic importance.