Sergei Eisenstein


Book Description

Now back in print, this acclaimed biography reassesses a titan of early cinema based on new material released after the fall of the Soviet Union. Sergei Eisenstein: A Life in Conflict tells the dramatic story of one of world cinema’s towering geniuses and principal theorists. Ronald Bergan details Eisenstein’s life from his precocious childhood to his explosion onto the avant-garde scene in revolutionary Russia, through his groundbreaking film career, his relationships with authors and artists such as James Joyce and Walt Disney, and his untimely death at age fifty. Eisenstein’s landmark films, including The Battleship Potemkin and Ivan the Terrible, are still watched, admired, and taught throughout the world. Drawing upon material recently released from the Soviet archives after the breakup of the USSR and from Eisenstein’s personal letters, diaries, and sketches, Bergan shines a new light on the influence of Eisenstein’s early life on his work, his homosexuality, and his keen interest in the West. This book is the definitive biography of an influential director who saw film as the synthesis of all the arts and whose work displayed a passionate and profound grasp of art, science, philosophy, and religion.




The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible


Book Description

As seen on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday A beacon of hope in the face of our current world crises, this uplifting book demonstrates how embracing our interconnectedness is key to world transformation In a time of social and ecological crisis, what can we as individuals do to make the world a better place? This inspirational and thought-provoking book serves as an empowering antidote to the cynicism, frustration, paralysis, and overwhelm so many of us are feeling, replacing it with a grounding reminder of what’s true: we are all connected, and our small, personal choices bear unsuspected transformational power. By fully embracing and practicing this principle of interconnectedness—called interbeing—we become more effective agents of change and have a stronger positive influence on the world. Throughout the book, Eisenstein relates real-life stories showing how small, individual acts of courage, kindness, and self-trust can change our culture’s guiding narrative of separation, which, he shows, has generated the present planetary crisis. He brings to conscious awareness a deep wisdom we all innately know: until we get ourselves in order, any action we take—no matter how good our intentions—will ultimately be wrong-headed and wrong-hearted. Above all, Eisenstein invites us to embrace a radically different understanding of cause and effect, sounding a clarion call to surrender our old worldview of separation, so that we can finally create the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible. With chapters covering separation, interbeing, despair, hope, pain, pleasure, consciousness, and many more, the book invites us to let the old Story of Separation fall away so that we can stand firmly in a Story of Interbeing.




Eisenstein on Paper


Book Description

The first comprehensive book on the extensive, yet rarely seen, graphic works of pioneering filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein Sergei Eisenstein is regarded as one of cinema’s greatest revolutionaries. Less well known is that he was also a prolific graphic artist who drew compulsively as a means of expressing his ideas. Arranged chronologically, Eisenstein on Paper is divided into six chapters, each prefaced by short texts relating to the graphic works of each distinct period, and interwoven with excerpts from Eisenstein’s own essays and diary entries. In 1930 Eisenstein traveled to the United States and then Mexico, where he produced hundreds of drawings influenced by ancient and contemporary Mexican art. Forced to return to Russia in 1932, Eisenstein came under the scrutiny of the Communist government and, struggling to make further films without political interference, turned again to sketching for artistic freedom. By the end of his life, he had pared his style down to the utmost simplicity and sincerity. Despite completing relatively few films in his lifetime, Eisenstein made several thousand drawings. Eisenstein on Paper is the product of a groundbreaking collaboration with RGALI, the Russian State Archive of Arts and Literature, and is a fitting tribute to an incredible graphic talent.




The Cinema of Eisenstein


Book Description

The Cinema of Eisenstein is David Bordwell's comprehensive analysis of the films of Sergei Eisenstein, arguably the key figure in the entire history of film. The director of such classics as Potemkin, Ivan the Terrible, October, Strike, and Alexander Nevsky, Eisenstein theorized montage, presented Soviet realism to the world, and mastered the concept of film epic. Comprehensive, authoritative, and illustrated throughout, this classic work deserves to be on the shelf of every serious student of cinema.




Sacred Economics


Book Description

Sacred Economics traces the history of money from ancient gift economies to modern capitalism, revealing how the money system has contributed to alienation, competition, and scarcity, destroyed community, and necessitated endless growth. Today, these trends have reached their extreme—but in the wake of their collapse, we may find great opportunity to transition to a more connected, ecological, and sustainable way of being. This book is about how the money system will have to change—and is already changing—to embody this transition. A broadly integrated synthesis of theory, policy, and practice, Sacred Economics explores avant-garde concepts of the New Economics, including negative-interest currencies, local currencies, resource-based economics, gift economies, and the restoration of the commons. Author Charles Eisenstein also considers the personal dimensions of this transition, speaking to those concerned with "right livelihood" and how to live according to their ideals in a world seemingly ruled by money. Tapping into a rich lineage of conventional and unconventional economic thought, Sacred Economics presents a vision that is original yet commonsense, radical yet gentle, and increasingly relevant as the crises of our civilization deepen. Sacred Economics official website: http://sacred-economics.com/




The Film Sense


Book Description

A renowned Soviet director discusses his theory of film as an artistic medium which must appeal to all senses and applies it to an analysis of sequences from his major movies.




Climate


Book Description

A stirring case for a wholesale reimagining of the framing, tactics, and goals we employ in our journey to heal from ecological destruction With research and insight, Charles Eisenstein details how the quantification of the natural world leads to a lack of integration and our “fight” mentality. With an entire chapter unpacking the climate change denier’s point of view, he advocates for expanding our exclusive focus on carbon emissions to see the broader picture beyond our short-sighted and incomplete approach. The rivers, forests, and creatures of the natural and material world are sacred and valuable in their own right—not simply for carbon credits or preventing the extinction of one species versus another. After all, when you ask someone why they first became an environmentalist, they’re likely to point to the river they played in, the ocean they visited, the wild animals they observed, or the trees they climbed when they were a kid. This refocusing away from impending catastrophe and our inevitable doom cultivates meaningful emotional and psychological connections and provides real, actionable steps to caring for the earth. Freeing ourselves from a war mentality and seeing the bigger picture of how everything from prison reform to saving the whales can contribute to our planetary ecological health, we resist reflexive postures of solution and blame and reach toward the deep place where commitment lives.




In Excess


Book Description

During the 1920s and ’30s, Mexico attracted an international roster of artists and intellectuals—including Orson Welles, Katherine Anne Porter, and Leon Trotsky—who were drawn to the heady tumult engendered by battling cultural ideologies in an emerging center for the avant-garde. Against the backdrop of this cosmopolitan milieu, In Excess reconstructs the years that the renowned Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein spent in the country to work on his controversial film ¡Que Viva Mexico! Illuminating the inextricability of Eisenstein’s oeuvre from the global cultures of modernity and film, Masha Salazkina situates this unfinished project within the twin contexts of postrevolutionary Mexico and the ideas of such contemporaneous thinkers as Walter Benjamin. In doing so, Salazkina explains how Eisenstein’s engagement with Mexican mythology, politics, and art deeply influenced his ideas, particularly about sexuality. She also uncovers the role Eisenstein’s bisexuality played in his creative thinking and identifies his use of the baroque as an important turn toward excess and hybrid forms. Beautifully illustrated with rare photographs, In Excess provides the most complete genealogy available of major shifts in this modern master’s theories and aesthetics.




Eisenstein on Disney


Book Description




Immoral Memories


Book Description

"Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948), creator of such masterpieces as Battleship Potemkin, Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible, was perhaps the greatest of all film directors. He wrote his autobiography in 1946, two years before his death, and it is a work of major importance in the light it sheds on his personality and mercurial genius. Vivid, eccentric and free-ranging, Immoral Memories is written in a style reminiscent of the brilliant visual effects of montage and dynamic progression that characterize its author's film-making technique. He recounts his life in Russia from the time of the Revolution, during which he served in the Bolshevik army as a volunteer, his travels in the West and his encounters with a remarkable medley of individuals during his long career. He gives us unique insights, too, into his triumphs and tribulations. His disappointments and despair were exemplified by the banning of the film Ivan the Terrible, Part II, which was not released until fifteen years after his death. And he never expected his autobiography to be published in Russia. Yet in answer to his query "Has there been life" he replied that there had been "life lived acutely, joyously, tormentedly, at times even sparkling, unquestionably colourful, and such a life that, I suppose, I would not exchange for another""--Publisher's description.