Sergei Eisenstein- David Katzman

I was excited to read Sergei Eisenstein’s article “Beyond the Shot [The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram]” because despite knowing much about Chinese and Taiwanese I had never studied Japanese Cinema.  Last year in my Chinese Cinema class I learned about the conventions and characteristics of Asian cinema, and was curious if Japanese cinema could be similar in form.  Eisenstein discusses various characteristics of Japanese culture and how it related to its national cinema.  The focus of much of the paper is on montage.  I was surprised to hear that Japanese cinema often disregards montage where American and European cinema has embraced it.  Also, if I recall correctly, Chinese cinema also rarely uses montage; instead, editing is often kept at a minimum.  I also really enjoyed how he described montage, as “an idea that arises from the collision of independent shots- shots even opposite to one another: the dramatic principle.” This technique was very clearly presented in The Battleship Potemkin.