SERGEI M EISENSTEIN

hasbeenwritten,thisresearchperspectiveinvitesustoconsidermediahistoryas
“an archaeology of possible futures and of the perpetual presence of several
pasts,” 32 andthis,itseemstome,isexactlywhatwefindinEisenstein’s“general
history”: a history of the “possible futures” and the “several pasts” of cinema
that, as we will now see, can be considered a form of media archaeology also
because it is based on an “archaeological” understanding of culture as the coexistenceofvariousdifferenthistorical“layers.”
1. Cinema, Montage, and the “Vertical Column of History”
The project for a “general history of cinema” was conceived by a film director
whosefilms–whetherfullycompleted,begunbutunfinished,orsimplyplanned
–dealtlargelywitheventsbelongingtoRussianandSoviethistory. 33 Strike(1924)
and Battleship Potëmkin (1925) showed events leading to the October Revolution,
which wasdirectly portrayedin October(1928). Bezhin Meadow(1935-1937) andThe
General Line (later renamed Old and New) (1926-1929) represented the social conflicts
accompanying the deployment of collective farming policies in the Soviet
Union. Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible (1942-1946) focused on two
legendary figures of Russian history, while the unrealized projects Moscow in time
(1933-1934), The Great Fergana Canal (1939) and Moscow 800 (1947) were conceived
as large historical frescoes spanning through centuries and portraying a series of
crucial historical turning points that had led to the glorious present of the Soviet
Union. Other films and film projects dealt instead with the history of revolutionary
events throughout the world: Black Majesty and The Black Consul (both 1930-
1931) dealt with the Haitian Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century and
with the historical figures of the revolutionary leaders Henri Christophe and
Toussaint Louverture; Que Viva Mexico! (1930-1932), finally – which Eisenstein
neverhadachancetocompletebecausetherusheswerekeptintheUnitedStates
and never sent to Moscow by the American writer Upton Sinclair, who had financed
the project – was supposed to present a spatio-temporal itinerary
throughoutMexicanhistoryandculture.
What impact did all these historical films and film projects have on Eisenstein’s
idea of history? What lessons did he derive from them when the time
came to write the “general history” of the medium he had been working with
since Glumov’s Diary, the short film which he had included in the 1923 theater
productionofTheWiseMan?
On the one hand, working on films such as Battleship Potëmkin and October had
led Eisenstein to understand how cinema could contribute to the production of a
powerful, epicvisionof historyand totheconstructionof awidelyshared collective
memory. In the Notes Eisenstein considers these films as belonging to the
specifically Soviet genre of the “cine-chronicle” (kino-khronika), a way of documenting
and narrating history through cinema which could be fully understood
eisenstein’s media archaeology 27