Unlike the French Revolution of 1789, the Russian Revolution of 1917 coincided with the birth of cinema. We’ll never really know what the Fête de la Fédération, the first Bastille Day, looked like. We know it was held on July 14, 1790 on the Champ de Mars. We know that when it was all over there was a feast in the gardens of the Château de La Muette where over twenty thousand people ate, drank wine, and celebrated over the next few days. We have dozens of written accounts. But do we know what it all really looked like? No.

The tenth anniversary of the storming of the Winter Palace is different. Not only do we know exactly what it looked like. It was actually staged by one of the greatest filmmakers in history. Sergei Eisenstein’s October is more than a cinematic masterpiece. It’s a real life historical event…