Battleship Potemkin (DVD)

*This is NOT a comic! But I spent too many nights at the Silent Movie Theater in Los Angeles to not carry silent films in my shop! 

By Sergei M. Eisenstein. Published by BFI

DVD, 66 minutes, 1.33:1 aspect ratio, B&W, 1925 (

Sergei M. Eisenstein directs this historical, silent Russian drama centred on the naval mutiny and street riots at the seaport of Odessa that sparked the 1905 Russian Revolution.

When the crew of the Battleship Potemkin protests after being given rotten meat as rations, the captain responds by ordering the execution of the dissidents. Outrage at this injustice quickly ignites and the townspeople soon surround the harbour in a mass demonstration - but the scene gives way to tragedy and brutality as the authorities move in to quell the uprising.

• Drifters (John Grierson, 1929, 39 mins): Grierson's acclaimed film that follows a herring drifter, from departure in Scotland to market in East Anglia
• Granton Trawler (John Grierson, 1934, 11 mins): Grierson's follow up to Drifters, one of the GPO Film Unit's first experiments with sound
• Trade Tattoo (Len Lye, 1937, 6 mins): celebratory animation made from off-cuts of EMB and GPO films, including Drifters and Night Mail
• North Sea (Harry Watt, 1938, 32 mins): dramatic reconstruction of sea farers battle with the elements, produced by the GPO Film Unit