¡SERGEI EISENSTEIN MÉXICO! IDOLS BEHIND ALTARS

ABOUT THE EVENT:

“Between 2016-17, composer Michael Nyman and I collaborated on a massive multi-screen installation for The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, and Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. The idea was to produce a mash-up of the raw unedited Mexican footage with Michael’s music. The experimental digital restoration of the combined sounds and images would extend alongside José Clemente Orozco’s The Epic of American Civilization (1932-34), a large, multi-panel horizontal mural at Dartmouth College, and also inhabit a rather small area by Hermitage standards, the Jordan “Kerensky” Staircase Eisenstein had filmed for October (1928). The weight of the enterprise was its undoing. The one “object” realized was the 2-screen IDOLS BEHIND ALTARS composed of footage used by Jay Leyda for his marvelous EISENSTEIN’S MEXICAN FILM, EPISODES FOR STUDY (1955-57). The music and films evoked a new language of non-editing, that is each spoke back and forth to one another revitalizing the enchantments captured by Eisenstein. The overall effect conveys the vivid curiosity and sense of wonder witnessed by the filmmakers as they sculpted moving images into a portrait of Mexico between 1930 and 1932. The new music composed and performed in 2026 by Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky is just that, a joyous new reunion invigorating the authentic sights and sounds witnessed by Eisenstein.” — Bruce Posner

“If 500 years from now the name ‘Bruce Posner’ is forgotten, future historians you will name you the Master of Moving Diptychs. Eisenstein spoke of ‘vertical montage.’ When he sees your brand-new Idols Behind Altars, he will theorize ‘lateral montage.’ The panel pairs talk to each other with precision — now conjuring phantom eyeline matches, now forming geometrical shapes. The whole is very convincing, and I am sure Eisen+Tissé would not be against experimenting with parallel paneling, reminds me of Eisen’s ‘dynamic square’ theory.” — Yuri Tsivian

“It’s all about perspective. What is film but a collision of angles? What is a film soundtrack but an invisible mirror to the cinematic imaginary? When I approached Eisenstein’s fractured Mexican masterpiece, I found myself drawn back to my conviction that cinema is not merely a medium of observation, but a revolutionary engine of thought. In the digital age, our relationship to the image is more ‘dialectical’ than ever. It’s all a mix. We live in a world of constant juxtaposition, a perpetual ‘overtonal montage’ of data and desire. My score is a reflection of that friction. The rest, as we say in DJ culture, is ‘a remix.'” — Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky

FORMAT: DCP

DISTRIBUTOR: Kino Lorber