Overview

This video chronicles a crucial period in the life of the great Soviet filmmaker, Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948), when he left Moscow during WWII for the Kazakhstan capital to film Ivan the Terrible (1943). Suffering under a heavy work schedule, fighting artistic interference from the Ministry of Cinema, constantly fearful of arrest by Stalin's secret police, crushed by feelings of loneliness and forebodings of death, Eisenstein suffered his first heart attack. The video visits sites where he lived and worked, features intimate excerpts from Eisenstein's diary, rare production footage, the director's sketches and screen tests, and interviews with friends, coworkers, and Soviet journalists and film critics, including Naum Kleiman, curator of the Eisenstein Museum.