In Kino Klassika’s first film commission, Mark Cousins imagines a conversation between Sergei Eisenstein and DH Lawrence in a playful and time-travelling film essay
About the Film
Playing Eisenstein himself, Mark Cousins imagines the director’s response to the simple question: “Did you ever meet DH Lawrence?” “No, but I would have liked to…”
Cousins uses his characteristic lo-fi filming methods, mobile phone footage, inter titles, photographs, to invite us along as Eisenstein muses on DH Lawrence’s views on film “there is a far greater beauty in Charlie Chaplin’s face than there ever was in Valentino..”, the role of the artist, the naked human heart, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, repression, landscape and time travel.
Eisenstein wishes he could have travelled, argued, gone to Mexico with Lawrence. In this little, lyrical and touching film of time travel, Cousins summons up the voices of two of the 20th Century’s cultural titans and gives us the opportunity to do just that.
An encyclopedic cineaste who is as happy watching movies as making them, Mark Cousins has carved out a niche as the great chronicler of the medium…
Ian Christie
Film Maker, Critic, Programmer
Ian Christie is Anniversary Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck College and a Fellow of the British Academy. He is the co-curator of our exhibition at GRAD Unexpected Eisenstein. He co-curated Eisenstein: His Life and Art (Oxford Museum of Modern Art/Hayward Gallery, 1988). Ian also co-edited Eisenstein Rediscovered (1993) and The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents, 1896-1939 (1988). He is the author of monographs on Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger and Martin Scorsese.
