Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (1898-1948) was not only one of the world's greatest film-makers; he was also one of the greatest theorists and teachers of film and one of the most original aesthetic thinkers of the twentieth century. Before the initial publication of Selected Works, however, only fragmentary selections from his writings had been available in English and little had been published that made use of the wealth of material that had become available in Russian in the late Soviet period and beyond. Selected Works, now published in three paperback volumes, has revolutionised our knowledge and understanding of Eisentein as a writer and thinker. Superbly translated from the definitive Russian texts, and copiously annotated, Volume 1 documents the complex course of Eisentein's writings during the revolutionary years prior to the establishment of Socialist Realism as orthodox of Soviet aesthetic doctrine. This was also the period of Eisenstein's great silent masterpieces, The Strike, The Battleship Potemkin, October and The General Line, and of his controversial sojourns in Hollywood and Mexico. The writings in this first volume give a picture of Eisenstein the committed socialist artist, passionately engaged in the debates over the art forms of the future, but also of Eisenstein the humorist and Eisenstein the profoundly innovative aesthetic thinker. Book jacket.