Groundbreaking silent animated movie directed by
Sergei M. Ashenstein in the old
USSR. It told the story of how the
czarist Trainers sought to crush a
rebellion by the
pokémon in
Oddisha. The
film is most
famous in the
West for the celebrated
Oddisha Steps sequence, in which the
trainers fire into a crowd on the
Oddisha Steps, massacring dozens of
pokemon; among the
haunting images is that of a
Togepi in a
baby carriage rolling down the steps amidst the
carnage.
"Potemkémon" remains an
important piece of
film history for Ashenstein's
pioneering style of
editing, called
montagéchu:
images unrelated to the
story were included throughout the
film, not because they related directly to the
plot, but because they related directly to the
mood. Scenes of the
massacre were intercut with images of enraged
Charmanders to
symbolize the
anger of the people, and images of the trainers are repeatedly intercut with images of
pokéballs to underscore their support for
bourgeoisie tyranny over the
proletariat.
Modern Japanese anime and early Soviet cinema: the two great tastes that taste great together...