04. September 2013

Battleship Potemkin

Battleship Potemkin is one of film history’s most famous classics about a mutiny during the Revolution of 1905. With all the food on board gone rotten, the tormented seamen of a Russian battleship are forced to mutiny. Their leader dies in the attempt, but they nevertheless succeed in overpowering the officers and throw them overboard. But as more and more citizens join the insurrection after the ship’s landing in Odessa, the Tsar’s arriving troops retaliate brutally. Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein’s legendary silent film is composed of five acts and is still seen as a defining masterpiece. Especially the battle on the stairs of the Odessa harbour has been referenced to in many productions since. Austrian turbo-polka band Russkaja, which gained nationwide popularity as the in-house band of the popular TV satire Willkommen Österreich with Dirk Stermann and Christoph Grissemann, have now added a completely new sound to Battleship Potemkin with a mixture of their own songs and newly composed film score music. They will present this new soundtrack for the very first time during the LET’S CEE Film Festival in Vienna, namely in the Gartenbaukino, one of the festival’s official venues. The music will be performed live, with no synthetic sounds or playbacks. To sum it up: If you like world music and film, this is just the thing for you.