Cultuurpodium Porgy en Bess
Stichting Porgy & Bess Programma
Noordstraat 52
4531 GJ Terneuzen
Phone +31 115 613293

Account no: NL49RABO0119855186
KvK. no.: 22060064
BTW no.: NL 815845844-B02

Opening hours:
Saturday from 1 pm
before and after performances

Pantserkruiser Potjomkin

Film van Sergei Eisenstein

Normal:
€7.50
Student:
€5.00
Porgy Crew:
€0.00
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do 21 Nov 2019
Doors open:
19:00 hour
Start:
20:00 hour
End:
21:30 hour
Director Eisenstein did not want to make a historically correct reconstruction, he had the ambition to induce pathos with his film images: to create strong mood disorders among the film audience, the creation of a collective emotion of indignation and revolutionary elan.

BATTLESHIP POTJOMKIN is a very compact film that is worth seeing again and again. We see a masterly staging, with optimum use of the image composition, framing and editing.



1. People and maggots
The film opens with a number of introductory images: the Potjomkin in the open sea, a wildly buzzing surf. After the generic introduction the story starts: the crew is sleeping in the hammocks. A petty officer walks around. He hits one of the young sailors for no reason. Indignation in the front. The daily routine starts: maintaining the guns, furnishing the dining room, cooking the soup. The meat for the soup is in disintegration, maggots are teeming through it. The ship's doctor approves the meat anyway. The dining room remains empty, the sailors refuse to eat the soup. They prefer a scanty ration of bread. A few sailors do the dishes, a plate says: "give us our daily bread". A large pan of soup is bubbling at the boiling point.

2. The drama on the ship
At the appeal, the captain wants to know who found the soup edible. Only the non-commissioned officers step forward. The captain threatens to hang all the sailors. The sailors group around the gun tower. Only a small group remains on the front deck, enclosed by the officers. The captain launches a firing squad. The guns focus on the defenseless sailors who are collectively blindfolded with a large white canvas. At the highest of the tension, the sailor Vakulincuk shouts: “Brothers! Who are you shooting at? "
The marines of the firing squad refuse to shoot at their comrades, they lower their guns and the mutiny begins. The captain follows sailor Vakulincuk over the entire ship. In the tumult of the skirmishes, the captain manages to get hold of a gun and he shoots down the sailor. Vakulincuk falls overboard and gets caught in a rope. The sailors discover him, rush, but arrive too late: Vakulincuk falls lifeless into the sea. They carry his corpse via the on-board stairs.

3. A dead person calls
The crew brings their fallen comrade ashore in a motorboat in the early morning, where they put him in a tent on the quay. Images of the port of Odessa in fog. More and more inhabitants of the city are coming. Narrow stairs, a high overpass, the pier. A long procession of people shuffles past the tent. The mourning turns to anger. Fists are clenched, intense emotions, a man tears his shirt to pieces.

4. The stair scene
The population brings supplies to the Potjomkin with sailing boats. The remaining citizens gather on the broad, long harbor staircase. Children, women and disabled people wave to the boat. The red flag flies in top, they applaud. "Suddenly ..." soldier boots stomp down the stairs in tight lines, firing burst after burst. Everyone flees in disorder. Total shots of the masses are interspersed with close-ups of individuals: a mother sees her son trampled on by her, she walks with her child in her arms against the stream of people. She appeals in vain for an emotional appeal to the soldiers to stop. A woman with squeeze glasses still believes in talking, but a bullet hits her face. A young mother falls deadly hit, causing her pram to move. The pram rolls down without control, a young man looks on with a start. On board the Potjomkin people fire at the city, a building collapses. The ship then chooses open sea (because the fleet is coming). Short shots of three lion statues: first asleep, then as sitting, then as roaring.

5. Meeting with the fleet
Night and early twilight. We see sailors watching, or doing an uncomfortable hazy sleep. Officers and sailors share the same room. The sea is still empty. The crew is preparing feverishly. The ship is moving full speed ahead: vibrating pressure gauges, foamy wake). The guns are sharp. The fleet is coming. Impending gun barrels. The situation reflects the threat of the firing squad on the front deck. The fleet lets the Potjomkin pass, the sailors on the other ships refuse to shoot at the mutiny. A sailor looks up with joy, intermediate title: "brothers!" The guns are falling. The Potjomkin sails on unhindered.

POTJOMKIN premiered in Moscow in December 1925. A few months later the presentation followed in Berlin (April 1926). The film was refined to make a roulement in the large cinemas possible and was then given a music score by Eduard Meisel. This score was reconstructed in 1986 by the Brabant Orchestra. There is (since 1975) a posthumously composed score with music by Dimitri Sjostakovitch (excerpts from five of his symphonies) and a score by the Soviet composer Nikolai Krjukov.
The legendary film-maker Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein was born in Riga, Latvia in 1898, the son of Mikhail Osipovich Eisenstein and Julia Ivanona Konetskaya. His father was a civil engineer, head of the rail and traffic department, but became famous as an architect for a number of beautiful Art Nouveau buildings in Riga. He was a vain and authoritarian father. When Sergei was 11 years old, the couple finally broke up and mother left for Saint Petersburg with the entire household. Sergei never got over the thump of her departure. After studying civil engineering, he became involved in the Russian Revolution in 1917. When, during a Bolshevik demonstration, he was shot at by a large crowd by snipers from the police, the seeds were laid for his talent as a film director. He became the greatest filmmaker of the revolution. His most important films were Battleship Potjomkin (1925), Alexander Nevski (1938) and Ivan the Terrible (1944). He died in 1948 in Moscow.



Others also viewed:

Cultuurpodium Porgy en Bess
Stichting Porgy & Bess Programma
Noordstraat 52
4531 GJ Terneuzen
Phone +31 115 613293

Account no: NL49RABO0119855186
KvK. no.: 22060064
BTW no.: NL 815845844-B02

Opening hours:
Saturday from 1 pm
before and after performances