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The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history. Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein, born January 23, 1898, in Latvia, was, for better and worse, a distinct product of his time. At the turn of the century, the Russian Empire was a vast, volatile region of intense sociopolitical upheaval, technological innovation, and artistic inspiration, cultural facets that would define and dramatically impact Eisenstein’s subsequently tremulous life and career. Intending to follow in the footsteps of his father, Eisenstein was admitted to the Petrograd Institute of Civil Engineering in 1915. But with the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917, he enlisted in the Red Army and became a designer for its theatrical unit. Enamored by the heady influence of the Bolshevik uprising, Eisenstein was also inspired by assorted manner of creative expression, including Kabuki theater, opera, and comic strips. After joining the Proletkult Theatre in Moscow,...

Polish film was an early frontrunner, before occupation forced wave after wave of talent abroad. Its fortitude is embodied by Andrzej Wajda – still going strong 50 years after his first feature

There aren't many traces on the internet of the early Polish pioneers: people such as Kazimierz Prószyński and Bolesław Matuszewski who were operating at the turn of the century, turning out silent short docos called things like Ślizgawka w Łazienkach (Skating-rink in the Royal Baths). (Prószyński was also a pioneering camera inventor, developing a model called a pleograph in 1894, and a handheld effort called an aeroscope in 1909.) Nor is there any link for Anton in Warsaw for the First Time, Poland's legendary first feature film, directed by and starring Antoni Fertner in 1908.

Fertner, though, went on to a respectable career as an actor in the interwar period – you can see him as an old man in Książątko (1937, above) and Gehenna...