SERGEY EISENSTEIN (1898-1948)

Sergei Eisenstein lived in Riga until the age of 17. His father Mikhail Eisenstein, an architect, had built quite a number of outstanding Art Nouveau buildings in Riga, but Sergey all his life called himself a Riga boy. He was a filmmaking revolutionary who introduced the concept of attraction editing and together with Eduard Tisse, a Latvian-born cinematographer, he changed the course of development of the filmmaking language, surprising the world with his film The Battleship Potiomkin (1925) – because of its powerful emotional impact several countries banned its exhibition. In 1930, Eisenstein was invited to work in Hollywood, he filmed in Mexico for a long time, but in 1932 he was recalled to the USSR. They did not let him finish the film Bezhin Meadows (1935-37), however his next film – Alexander Nevsky (1938) received the State Prize. In 1944, Eisenstein makes the first part of his next historic film Ivan the Terrible (1944), but again the officials did not let him finish the second part The Conspiracy of Boyars because of ideological reasons and such an ordeal was too much for the director's heart.