October: Ten Days That Shook The World

Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein , né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage". He is noted in particular for his silent films Strike , Battleship Potemkin and October , as well as the historical epics Alexander... Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible . Eisenstein was born to a middle-class family in Riga, Latvia but his family moved frequently in his early years, as Eisenstein continued to do throughout his life. His father Mikhail Osipovich Eisenstein was of German-Jewish and Swedish descent, and his mother, Julia Ivanovna Konetskaya, was from a Russian Orthodox family. His father was an architect and his mother was the daughter of a prosperous merchant. Julia left Riga the same year as the Russian Revolution , bringing Sergei with her to St. Petersburg. Her son would return at times to see his father, who later moved to join them around 1910.Divorce followed and Julia deserted the family to live in France. At the Petrograd Institute of Civil Engineering, Sergei studied architecture and engineering, the profession of his father.
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Grigori Vasilyevich Aleksandrov or Alexandrov was a prominent Soviet film director who was named a People's Artist of the USSR in 1947 and a Hero of Socialist Labor in 1973. He was awarded the Stalin Prizes for 1941 and 1950. Initially associated with Sergei Eisenstein, with whom he worked as a... co-director, screenwriter and actor, Aleksandrov became a major director in his own right in the 1930s, when he directed Jolly Fellows and a string of other musical comedies starring his wife Lyubov Orlova. Though Aleksandrov remained active until his death, his musicals, amongst the first made in the Soviet Union, remain his most popular films. They rival Ivan Pyryev's films as the most effective and light-hearted showcase ever designed for Stalin-era USSR. Aleksandrov was born Grigori Vasilyevich Mormonenko in Ekaterinburg, Russia in 1903. Starting at age nine, Aleksandrov worked odd jobs at the Ekaterinburg Opera Theater, eventually making his way to assistant director.
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