This Soviet classic is screening at the Hebden Bridge Picture House on December 2nd. This is another of those rare chances to celebrate The Great October Revolution through the films that it inspired. If you saw The End of St. Petersburg / Konets Sankt-Peterburga (1927) here in Leeds in September you will have an idea of how impressive Soviet silent montage films can be.

The film is screening in a 35mm print from the restoration by the Munich Archive in 2005. This is now the closest version to the original screened at the Bolshoi Theatre in 1925. The restoration relied to a great extent on a surviving print in the BFI National Film Archive which was screened for the London Film Society by the director Sergei Eisenstein in 1929.

The print has both the original editing and title cards, some of which were cut by censorship later. It will have a live piano accompaniment by Darius Battiwalla. If you saw and heard the presentation of Berlin: Symphony of a Great City / Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt (1927) here  you will know what an excellent accompanist he is.

The film created a great stir on its release, both in the Soviet Union and internationally. The young Luis Buñuel was so inspired that he and his comrades erected a barricade in the street after watching the film. Especially famous is ‘The Odessa Steps Sequence’ but it seems likely that more people have seen that extract that have actually seen the whole film. Now is the opportunity to see the film complete and as close a possible to the version that created the sensation back in 1925.

The Hebden Bridge Picture House is accessible, about an hour by train or car from Leeds. It is an attractive cinema which opened in 1921, only seven years after the Hyde Park Picture House.