European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - February 04, 1993, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Film history do Flygt exhibition covers director s life from 1920-1925 Sergei Eisenstein below during filming of october in 1927 and on the ship during the filming of  byed Reavis staff writer v film history buffs won t want to miss the Sergei Eisenstein exhibit that is running through feb. 28 at the film museum in Frankfurt Germany. Eise Steirt 1 898-1 948 is the director of the film frequently listed As one of the most remarkable Ever made Potemkin. The movie made in 1925, deals with the Mutiny of the Crew on the battleship Potemkin during the 1 90s revolution in Russia. The scene filmed on the Odessa Steps where the militia causes a Bloodbath among the fleeing populace has been called one of the most electrifying in film history. Director Brian Depalma paid homage to the sequence in his 1 987 film the untouchables in which a baby buggy slowly bumps Down stairs in the midst of a gunfight. The Frankfurt exhibit is titled Sergei Eisenstein in context with the russian Avant Garde and covers his career from 1920 to 1925. Those five years Mark Eisenstein s arrival in Moscow As a highly talented 20-year-old and his personal transformation from his former Bourgeois identity As an artist and individual to a soviet revolutionary artist. During the period Eisenstein went from being a Dabbler in an Amateur theater group of the red army to becoming the director of films acknowledged As masterpieces. In Moscow Eisenstein joined forces with the Avant Garde and its agitprop programs aimed at destroying the vestiges of Bourgeois aesthetics and morals and supporting the revolution. The exhibit also demonstrates the great Faith soviet artists had in the Power of communism to invent the new  the new Man was not Only intellectual / willing to subordinate his individual desires to the common Good but to devote his life to that purpose. Soviet artists believed the future would see humans freed from Servile labor through the use of electricity the machine and literacy. The machine became the god of Early soviet belief and humans were often portrayed As half machine and vice versa. The artists Blind to the reality of leninism with its terror and internment Camps for dissidents focused on the progressive elements of the 1917 russian revolution and fell in step with the bolsheviks and eventually in the Early 1 930s, the utopian dream died. Some either became apologists for social realism As defined by the party or they fell into oblivion. Some were assassinated while others went into exile. The exhibit covers five themes using about 150 drawings photographs paintings and typographical sketches including Many photographs and theater and film designs that Are virtually unknown outside Russia. Selected films by Eisenstein and other soviet directors Are shown on 1 6 video monitors. The exhibit chronologically documents Eisenstein s career from theater to film and its relation to other russian Avant Garde artists. The following is designed to provide a guide when visiting the show. The guide the museum Sells is available Only in German. In the museum foyer Are soviet revolutionary film posters Eisenstein s biography and reproductions of his drawings and caricatures before 1920. The first exhibition area offers a Short explanation of the mainstream of russian Avant Garde Art Cuba futurism supreme autism and constructivism of which original examples and reproductions Are shown. Str prod a l photo Courtesy of Deutscher film museum a Large photograph of a typical agitation demonstration in Leningrad in 1925. Six documentary photos of agitation parades demonstrations and political allies. A Monitor showing selections from various soviet newsreels Between 1919 and 1925. Designs for agitation posters by Eisenstein from 1919. The second exhibition area shows Eisenstein s costume designs for the  proletarian culture theater production of the mexican by Jack London in 1 920 and 2 1compared with the costume designs by Vladimir May Kovski for Mutery bouffe 1 91 8 and Alexander Vesnin s costume designs for the Man who was thursday 1 923. Stage designs and photos of scenes from the mexican produced by Eisenstein compared with Vesnin s stage design for Phaedra 1922 and the poster Das capital the capital by Victor Deni in 1 91 9. 8 stripes Magazine february 4, 1993