World-famous Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein spent 1931 in Mexico after the rejection of his projects in Hollywood. The epic film he planned and largely shot would never be completed. In 2012, film historian Ian Christie visited the hacienda where Eisenstein spent much of his time in Mexico, to ask what really went on there, and discover what’s happened since. This essay film, made in partnership with Japanese filmmaker Chiemi Shimada, looks beyond the apparent failure, to ask what contemporary audiences – and Eisenstein himself – could still learn from Que Viva Mexico!

Join Professor Ian Christie for this special screening of A Trip to Tetlapayac. This is followed by the UK Premiere of The Marriage of Greta Garbo and Sergei Eisenstein, the latest tantalising video essay by American independent Mark Rappaport, best known for From the Journals of Jean Seberg and Rock Hudson's Home Movies. An intriguing 'what if' about these two cinematic legends after they met in Hollywood.

About Ian Christie

Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck College, a curator and broadcaster, and regular contributor to Sight & Sound. Among many exhibitions, Ian has curated the current GRAD Gallery Unexpected Eisenstein exhibition and is working on a forthcoming Royal Academy Revolution show. His publications include studies of Russian cinema, Eisenstein, Powell and Pressburger, Scorsese and Gilliam.

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