Happy Birthday Sergei Eisenstein – The world remembers you today Sergei. Even Google does as well.
The whole world pays tribute to the icon today. Sergei Eisenstein is a director and an artist who started the technique known as cinematic montage. He started by developing five methods of montage known as ‘metric, rhythmic, tonal, overtonal and intellectual’.
He made amazing and outstanding movies such as Potemkin, The General, Battleship among others. He is generally called the father who gave birth to Montage.
What do you know as montage by Sergie Eisenstein?
This is a technique in filming where by you edit fast paced sequence of short films to transcend time or suggest thematic juxtapositions. Sergie Eisenstein deployed arresting images in sequences of psychological precision. His movies wore revolutionary attributes as he is often seen to talk about the struggle of downtrodden workers against the ruling upper class.
What is his birthday today? – Sergie Eisenstein’s 120th
Today Sergie marks his 120th birthday and as expected Google Doodle celebrated this with a tribute to his pioneering technique. We celebrate you today, Happy birthday Sergei Eisenstein.
Did Sergie Eisenstein win any awards during his life time?
Sergei won two Stalin prizes, the first was to come in 1941 for the movie ‘Alexander Nevsky’. He would have to wait until 5 years later for another film namely “Ivan the Terrible” when he won yet another award.
He is such an amazing director.
History of Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Eisenstein was born in Riga, Latvia under the Russian empire on the 23rd January 1898 to a middle class family of Mikhail Eisenstein, an engineer.
Sergei joined the Rad Army to be with the Bolshevik Revolution after he had studied Civil Engineering.
In 1920, Sergei’s exposure to life commenced after he came in contact with theatre and left to Moscow to start a theorist career. He started his full length movie career with Strike, a feature film, while his Battleship Potemkin was making waves all over the world.
To celebrate this iconic man in 1998, the Bank of Russia produced two rouble coins in commemoration of his outstanding achievement. This coin is with an image of Sergie Ensenstein where he held onto the film, Battleship Potemkin
How did Sergei Eisenstein die?
Sergie Eisenstein had a terrible heart attack on the 2nd of February 1946 and he tried recovering for the rest of the year. Alas, he did not fully recover and he had another heart attack in 1948 whick took his life. He died at the age of 50.
He is such an amazing man who led a short but yet amazing life. Isn’t he?
Random Facts about Sergei Eisenstein
1. His father full names are Mikhail Osipovich Eisenstein who was a civil engineer cum architect while his mother’s full names are Julia Ivanovna Kontskaya.
2. His mother was a daughter of a very wealthy merchant
3. Sergei Eisenstein got married. Yes! He was married to a writer and filmakmaker Pera Atasheva, who till his death he remained married to.
He is known worldwide as the father of Montage!
His movies were so powerful that the UK banned on his amazing movie, Battleship Potemkin for several years.
4. Sergei Eisenstein died in Russia in 1948.
5. Sergei is very fluent in Japanese. This he learned when he was moved to a command position in Minsk after a successful propaganda for the October Revolution.
6. He won a Gold Award for his movie – Strike
Sergei Eisenstein quotes
See the famous Sergei Eisenstein quotes here:
1. Now why should the cinema follow the forms of theater and painting rather than the methodology of language, which allows wholly new concepts of ideas to arise from the combination of two concrete denotations of two concrete objects?
2. For example, in painting the form arises from abstract elements of line and color, while in cinema the material concreteness of the image within the frame presents – as an element – the greatest difficulty in manipulation.
3. The profession of film director can and should be such a high and precious one; that no man aspiring to it can disregard any knowledge that will make him a better film director or human being.
4. Even in a less exaggerated description, any verbal account of a person is bound to find itself employing an assortment of waterfalls, lightning rods, landscapes, birds, etc.
5. In painting, the form arises from abstract elements of line and color, while in cinema, the material concreteness of the image within the frame presents – as an element – the greatest difficulty in manipulation.
6. “Down the steps,
…over the corpses,
…careers the pram with the child.”
7. “Language is much closer to film than painting is.”
Picture credit : IMDB
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