Strike (1925)

Strike (Russian: Стачка, romanized: Stachka) is a 1925 Soviet silent propaganda film directed and edited by Sergei Eisenstein. Originating as one entry out of a proposed seven-part series titled "Towards Dictatorship of the Proletariat", Strike was a joint collaboration between the Proletcult Theatre and the film studio Goskino. As Eisenstein's first full-length feature film, it marked his transition from theatre to cinema, and his next film Battleship Potemkin emerged from the same film cycle.

Arranged in six parts, 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, and similar animal metaphors are used throughout the film to describe various individuals.

Upon release, Strike received praise from critics, but many audiences were confused by its eccentric style. It received little international distribution until its reappraisal during the 1950s and 1960s. It is now recognized as one of Eisenstein's more accessible works and a major influence on many of his contemporaries.