Strike (Russian: Стачка, romanized: Stachka) is a 1925 silent drama film directed and edited by Sergei Eisenstein, and produced in the Soviet Union at Goskino. Eisenstein's first full-length feature film, he would go on to make Battleship Potemkin later that year. Performed by the Proletcult Theatre, and composed of six parts, Strike was in turn, intended to be one part of a seven-part series,[1] entitled Towards Dictatorship (of the proletariat), that was left unfinished. Eisenstein's influential essay, Montage of Attractions was written between production and premiere.
The film depicts a strike in 1903 by the workers of a factory in pre-revolutionary Russia, and their subsequent suppression. It is best known for a sequence towards the climax, in which the violent suppression of the strike is cross-cut with footage of cattle being slaughtered, although there are several previous points where animals are used as metaphors for the conditions of various individuals. Another significant theme is collectivism in opposition to individualism which was viewed as a convention of western film.[4] Collective efforts and collectivization of characters are central to both Strike and Battleship Potemkin.
