"Battleship Potemkin" to be restored

Uncensored premiere for Potemkin

A newly reconstructed version of the 1925 Soviet film Battleship Potemkin will premiere at Berlin Film Festival.

The film, by Sergei Eisenstein, dramatised a mutiny on the Russian ship showing how it inspired a failed 1905 uprising against the country's czars.

It now includes Russian graphics and words from revolutionary Leon Trotsky, which were censored in the 1920s.

The festival, which is showing the film next year, said no complete print of the original movie survived.

It will be shown at the festival on 12 and 13 February and will be accompanied by live music from the German Film Orchestra Babelsberg.

One of its best-known scenes is the Odessa steps sequence, in which a child in a pram rolls down a staircase as fighting rages around it.

Battleship Potemkin has influenced many artists and film-makers

But the film, which was shot for the 20th anniversary of the failed uprising, was victim of "one of the most spectacular cases of censorship in the 1920s" after being cut by the Soviets, a festival statement said.

As well as the inclusion of the graphics and Trotsky's words, changes and cuts carried out on the famous staircase sequence as a result of the film's censorship have been corrected.

The reconstruction has been supported by the British Film Institute and Germany's federal film archive.

Edmund Meisel's original musical score has been revised for the screening.

The 55th Berlin Film Festival will run from 10 to 20 February 2005.

*****

No one can claim to be a serious film buff without having seen "Battleship Potemkin." Its restoration is welcome news indeed.