Battleship Potemkin Dance Edit (120 BPM)

2007, 12:29 min, b&w, sound

Bell-Smith refers to his re-edit of Eisenstein's iconic 1925 film The Battleship Potemkin as a "sort of Cliff Notes condensation of the original narrative." Writes the artist, "I've separated the film into its constituent shots and time stretched them one by one to the exact same length, one half of a second. I then replaced the soundtrack with a one-second dance loop synced to the cuts."

Through his reconfiguration, Bell-Smith replaces the editing structure of the original film (seminal in its use of montage) with the "dumb, visceral, metric montage favored by dance visuals and music videos" offering up a new context for the film's stark imagery and revolutionary narrative.

With the assistance of Jeff Sission.