It is hard to imagine a better choice to give a masterclass on the classic Battleship Potemkin (1925) from a century ago than film historian Andrei Plahov. Plahov has written a book on the history of Soviet cinema, The Soviet Cinema (1988), as well as books on Catherine Deneuve, Luchino Visconti and Aki Kaurismäki.
Plahov has been a critic and writer since the 1970s. His work has appeared in the Guardian, Sight and Sound and Cahiers du Cinéma, and he has served as a jury member at both the Cannes Film Festival and the Berlinale. He has also served as president of Fipresci, the International Federation of Film Critics.
Political history has left its mark on the work of Plahov, who was born in what is now Ukraine. During the perestroika period, he headed a commission that released films that had been banned for ideological reasons during the Soviet era. In 2022, he was one of the filmmakers who signed a petition against Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine.
Kaisu Tervonen