Battleship Potemkin (PG)

Astounding… breathtaking… extraordinary… To celebrate its 80th birthday in 2005, Sergei Eisenstein’s revolutionary cinematic masterpiece was given a Pet Shop Boys synth pop musical work over and presented publicly (and to acclaim) at the Barbican Theatre and in Trafalgar Square in London. In the 2025 remastered version we are screening at Ditchling Village Hall for our October showing, The Pet Shop boys score is performed by the Dresden Sinfoniker and orchestrated by Torsten Rasch.

Eisenstein always said his originally silent film should be accompanied by contemporary music. To keep it relevant for new audiences he suggested the musical accompaniment should be revised and updated every decade or so.

The Edmund Meisel score was the first update and later, the Kryukov adaptation of Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony took up the challenge. Now with the Pet Shop Boys score, twenty years on, the music is uncompromisingly “club”, not at all symphonic, but it is contemporary. It certainly is not Russian. But somehow, perhaps because it is “club” with its relentlessly driving beat, it
manages to work across the mass crowd scenes, the giant machine cut-aways and the individual expressions of suffering and horror that were so brilliantly captured by Eisenstein and that are emblematic of his masterpiece.

Welcome to our showing of one of the most acclaimed films in cinematic
history.

We present our film with an introduction and question time with the film
historian and archivist Dr Frank Grey.

Director Sergei M. Eisenstein. 72 minutes. Silent. Originally screened in 1925. This version with new accompanying soundtrack by the Pet Shop Boys. 2025