S3E5 - Battleship Potemkin / Man with Movie Camera

Episode Notes

S3 E5: Battleship Potemkin / Man with Movie Camera


Rachel gets angry about the dramatization of an event from 116
years ago; Anna thinks really hard about shot selection and
sequence; Frank swears he isn’t a tankie then recklessly glosses
over the birth pangs of the most 20th-century of nations; we all
agree that these films are great feats of cinema, but we have
somewhat different attitudes toward the meaning and value of
propaganda. For more detailed explanations of historical context
than Frank gives here, please consult the podcasts in the notes
below.


Battleship Potemkin. Dir. Sergei Eisenstein. Writ. Nina
Agadzhanova, Sergei Eisenstein, & Grigoriy Aleksandrov. Perf.
Aleksandr Antonov, Vladimir Barskiy, Grigoriy Aleksandrov, Nina
Poltavtseva, Prokhorenko, A. Glauberman. Mosfilm, 1925.


Man with Movie Camera. Dir. Dziga Vertov. Writ. Dziga Vertov.
Perf. Mikhail Kaufman, Elizaveta Svilova. VUFKU, 1929.


FURTHER READING & LISTENING:


Duncan, Mike. Revolutions. Season 10: May, 2019-present.


Eisenstein, Sergei. Film Form & The Film Sense. Translated
and edited by Jay Leyda. Meridian, 1964.


Painter, Mark. The History of the Twentieth Century. Ep. 31-235
(May 2016-Apr. 2021). [This huge range of episodes obviously
deals with much more than Russian history, but listening to
selected episodes in this span will cover the period from the
Russo-Japanese War to Stalin’s first Five-Year Plan and thus will
explain everything from the events that inspired Battleship
Potemkin to the era in which it was produced.]


Vertov, Dziga. Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov. Edited by
Annette Michelson. Translated by Kevin O’Brien. University of
California Press, 1995.


The Pointless Crew: Frank Fucile (he/him/his) – Lit & Theory,
Film & Media, Genre, Enviro & Tech Studies // Rachel
Hamele (she/her/hers) – History, Humanities, Queer Studies,
Fandoms // Anna Wendorff (she/her/hers) – Communications,
Rhetorics of Sci & Tech, Feminism // Madalyn McCabe
(she/her/hers) – Sound Editing, European Studies


// Troll us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PointlessCent //
T-shirts are now available:
http://www.teepublic.com/user/the-pointless-century // Watch us
on Instagram: @thePointlessCentury // Support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/ThePointlessCentury


MUSIC: REFUSED – “Tannhaüser / Dérive” (Burning Heart, 1998)
SLEEP – “The Sciences” (3rd Man, 2018)


ART: Screen shot from Battleship Potemkin, Blu-Ray edition (with
colorization), dir. Sergei Eisenstein (Mosfilm, 1925 / Kino
Lorber, 2010)