' BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN ' : FILM MASTERPIECE HONOURS

Film Battleship Potemkin a Century on. This is how Sergei Eisenstein's masterpiece, which turned 100 this past December, redrew the boundaries of cinema.

BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN redrew the boundaries of cinema, both aesthetically and politically.

It is a dramatised retelling of a 1905 mutiny in the Black Sea Fleet of the Imperial Russian Navy - a key cresting point in the wave of profound social and political unrest that swept across the empire that year.

The first Russian revolution saw workers,  peasants and soldiers rise up against their masters, driven by deep frustration with poverty, autocracy and military defeat.

Although the tsar remained in power, the discord forced him to concede limited reforms that fell far short of what had been demanded.

The impetus for the historical mutiny on the Potemkin was a protest over rotten food rations. Eisenstein emphasises this in his film, lingering on stomach-churning closeups of maggots crawling over spoiled meat.

When the sailors refuse to eat the purrid rations, they are accused of insubordination and lineup before a firing squad.

The men refuse to gun down their comrades and the crew rises up raising the red flag of  international solidarity as they symbolically nail their colours to the mast.

A sailor called Vakulinchuk, who helped lead the uprising, is killed in the struggle. Sailing to Odessa, the crew lays his body out for public mourning and the mood in the city becomes increasingly volatile.

Support for the sailors swells, and the authorities respond with lethal force, sending in troops and prompting the slaughter on the Odessa Steps.

The Potemkin fires on the city's opera house in retaliation, where military leaders have gathered. Soon after a squadron of loyal warships approaches to crush the revolt. The mutineers brace for battle, but the sailors on the other boats choose not to fire.

They cheer the rebels and allow the Potemkin to pass in an act of comradeship.

The World Students Society thanks Alexander Howard, a Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of English and Writing at the University of Sydney in Australia.