SECRET MOVIE CLUB present
Part of our EDITING MASTERWORKS series! Thursday, June 16, 2022
LOCATION: The Secret Movie Club Theater, 1917 Bay Street, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90021
*Please note entrance/parking is actually in the back of the building. Make a right on Wilson Street, then a right behind the building. We’re the first set of black steps after the big gate.
8pm THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (1925, co-written & directed by Sergei Eisenstein, Kino Lorber, USSR, 75mns, 35mm)
IMPORTANT NOTES:
***As of April 1, 2022, masks are now optional for indoor theater events if you're fully vaccinated. Anyone without proof of vaccination will be required to wear a mask for their own safety. We will continue to update our protocols with the dynamic situation. We are working to make sure we make the theater going experience the most enjoyable and safest possible.
HOW TO:
1)PLEASE BRING YOUR VACCINATION CARD (digital cards accepted).
2)PLEASE BE AWARE THAT ANYONE EXHIBITING COVID OR FLU LIKE SYMPTOMS AT THE DOOR, WILL BE OFFERED COMPLIMENTARY TICKETS TO A FUTURE SHOW AND ASKED TO RETURN WHEN HEALTHY. So please, if you’re feeling sick, just write us at community@secretmovieclub.com and we’ll offer you complimentary tickets to a future screening when you’re healthy. (Disclaimer under “REFUNDS” applies)
This month, we’re doing a mini-series on some amazing masterworks where editing plays as key a role as any of the other departments.
We launch (pun intended) with the great-grandparent of them all Sergei Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin. On 35mm!
The evolution of film editing, like all the disciplines, was and will always be an incremental and constant thing. Certainly earlier silent film pioneer D.W. Griffith did as much (if not the most) for film grammar and editing as anyone who followed him.
We had to have the invention of the close up, the medium shot, the traveling shot, etc before we could get to the cinematic fireworks that Sergei Eisenstein would light off.
That being importantly acknowledged, Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein really is the parent of discovering a kind of cinematic editing that is only possible in movies.
Cross cutting, overlapping editing, extending an action or sequence beyond how we would experience it temporally, match cutting, editing to create a cinematic motif or metaphor - all of these incredible tools were sharpened, discovered & elevated by Eisenstein, one of cinema’s greatest of all masters.
Tonight, we show the movie that was a cannon across the bow to all moviemakers, as loud as FW Murnau’s Sunrise would be just a few years later.
The Battleship Potemkin tells the story of the 1905 proletariat insurrection on a naval battleship that would be one of the bugle calls of the impending Russian revolution and overthrow of the Czar.
Eisenstein uses this incident, though, to really create a kind of mind-blowing editorial ballet of people, locations, psychological states, images & actions.
The Odessa Steps sequence (which details a horrible massacre of protesters by soldiers) - which film students have studied for the past 100 years - is still, to this very day, one of the most innovative feats of editing ever accomplished.
One might be tempted to almost feel bleak at how few filmmakers have really learned, absorbed or advanced the art of film editing that Eisenstein demonstrated a century ago. But this programmer feels that would be the wrong lesson.
What’s more important, in this programmer’s humble opinion, is that the few filmmakers who did really understand editing’s importance - Hitchcock, Spielberg, Kurosawa, Scorsese, Godard, Resnais, editor Dede Allen & David Lean, to name just a few - have set the stage for the next generation of moviemakers to climb their way onto the shoulders of these giants and discover the next light-year jump in editing expressiveness.
Come watch, get inspired, and experiment. On 35mm!
Best always,
Craig Hammill
Secret Movie Club Founder/Programmer
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS FOR OUR IN-DOOR THEATER SCREENINGS
REFUNDS:
We can offer refunds up to 24 hours before showtime. Please request a refund through Eventbrite and we will process ASAP. After that, no refunds. Sorry.
However if something last minute comes up and you can’t make the screening, for whatever reason, just write to us before showtime: community@secretmovieclub.com and we’ll offer you complimentary tickets to a future screening. (Disclaimer: Future screening must have available tickets, cannot be a fundraiser, and must be comparably priced)
HELPFUL SECRET MOVIE CLUB (1917 Bay Street, 2nd Floor, LA, CA 90021) THEATER PARKING TIPS:
We recommend that you park just outside our theater. Remember our theater is actually in a beautiful street art alleyway in the back of the 1917 Bay Street building. You get to our entrance by taking a right on Wilson, then a right behind the building. We are the first set of black steps on the right after the big gate.
There is also a parking lot at the corner of Mateo and Violet Street, just 2 blocks from our theater, which costs $7 per car.
HOW CAN WE STAY ON TOP OF NEWLY ANNOUNCED 35MM SCREENINGS, EVENTS, ETC?
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HOW CAN I CONTACT YOU IF I HAVE OTHER QUESTIONS/RECOMMENDATIONS:
You can always email us at community@secretmovieclub.com with any other questions, concerns, thoughts, recommendations.