By HM

As part of Red Ant Naarm’s “Rebels and Revolutionaries” Spring 2025 film series, we recently screened the 1925 Soviet film “Strike”, directed by Sergei Eisenstein. One hundred years later! It’s a classic of Soviet cinema, of revolutionary cinema and also just of cinema. Eisenstein is famous for his revolutionary approach to filmmaking –particularly his approach to montage, what he called “dialectical montage.” When reading in preparation for our screening, I came across this poem of his that I like and that gives an insight into his approach:

First master art.

Then destroy it.

Penetrate into the mysteries of art.

Unveil them.

Master art.
And then snatch off its mask, expose it, destroy it!

“Strike” is narrative fiction, but it’s inspired by real events, real strikes that took place in Russia about 20 years before the film was made (so around the start of the 20^th century in the build-up to the 1905 and 1917 revolutions), at points adopting a realist/documentary style of filmmaking, blurring the past into one grand narrative. But the film doesn’t really follow the conventions of narrative cinema; Eisenstein eschews a traditional story structure with clear “heroes.” Of course, on the whole we sympathise with the proletariat, but there’s not really any singular character that we identify ourselves with—it’s a film with no protagonists. And while the film has plenty of dramatic, grounded, serious, realist moments (particularly concerning the working-class characters), Eisenstein is able to push the film in very different tonal directions to suit the ‘grand narrative’ he’s presenting. With the representation of the bourgeoisie, Eisenstein moves across a spectrum from realism to caricature.  While the police forces throughout feel chillingly real, the big bosses feel like they’re played for laughs. It’s a silent film, but one of my favourite moments comes when the bosses—sitting around, puffing smoke, and discussing the strike—declare that “it’s an outrage to bring politics into the workplace!”

During our post-screening discussion, one comrade said something along the lines of “Now knowing how the second half goes, I’m not sure I could laugh at the first half again.” This perhaps makes me a bad person (or bad socialist), because I continue to find parts of the first half funny! But the escalating violence of the second half (as the bourgeois forces work to crush the strike), and the very famous final scene, are definitely sobering. There are some moments of violence, particularly towards children, that are genuinely shocking. 

While the strike is defeated, the close of the film is not necessarily defeatist. At its premiere, it played in the context of a successful revolution—the first of its kind! Watching it a hundred years later, the film plays in the context of the ultimate failure of the Soviet experiment. So for the contemporary audience, this adds a layer of demoralisation and tragedy to the sacrifices of the working class that are depicted. Overall, the film is about the efforts and the failures of the organisers who came before us. “Strike” is one hundred years old now (and depicts a strike that is even older than that), but we still face many of the same challenges that those workers faced. How can we lead successful strikes? How can we fight off police brutality? How can such strikes build toward the actual seizing of power from the bourgeoisie? 

And, when watching the film, I guess we also ask whether cinema can be a tool for liberation? Can films be used for revolutionary struggle? I would gather that now the only people who would watch “Strike” are either committed socialists or cinephiles (or both, maybe the Venn diagram here is just one circle). The film is certainly effective in calling us to link ourselves to a long tradition of resistance and learn from the past. Of course, Eisenstein himself wants to use cinema as a tool in revolutionary struggle, and so in its very final moments the film looks at us and asks us to “remember”, remember all the comrades who came before us, where they went wrong, and where they went right. Bill Nichols sums it up nicely, saying: ““Eisenstein’s workers” are us. It is we who remember what they have experienced. It is we who act, who continue and complete what they have begun, who exceed that form of consciousness contained by narrative or expository form.” (Nichols 82). 

The film opens with a powerful Lenin quote: “The strength of the working class is organisation. Without the organisation of the masses, the proletariat is nothing. Organised, it is everything. Being organised means unity of action, the unity of practical activity.” And so I’ll end this with my own summation and what I think calls out to us at the end of the film: Get organised! 

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Nichols, Bill. “Strike and the Question of Class.” The Hidden Foundation: Cinema and the Question of Class, edited by David E. James and Rick Berg, NED-New edition, University of Minnesota Press, 1996, pp. 72–89. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.cttttz6k.6.

The Indian documentary Red Ant Dream on October 28th is the next film in Red Ants Naarms “Rebels and Revolutionaries” 2025 film series.

It will be followed on November 8th with a showing of the Indian classic “Our Land”.

Keep an eye on our events calendar for other future film screenings!