In 1944 Sergei Eisenstein wrote: "Walt Disney's work is the most omni-appealing I've ever come across. In terms of material, Disney's pictures are pure ecstasy – bearing all the traits of ecstasy (the immersion of self in nature and animals, etc.). Their comicality lies in the fact that the process of ecstasy is represented as an object: literalized, formalized."

Eisenstein met Disney in 1930; he admired him deeply and was influenced by his work. In his theoretical project Method (1932–1948), which he initiated in Mexico, he devoted a chapter to Disney. In the manuscript of this unfinished book, Eisenstein examines modernity in its relation to archaic structures and analyzes artworks as reified imprints of pre-logical mentality, as collective dream images. The ecstatic state induced by art is an important starting point for his investigation and Disney becomes a central object of this analysis, as in his work the plasmatic qualities of form, color, and rhythm, are combined with animism and totemism.

The lecture by Oksana Bulgakowa analyzes Eisenstein's vision of Disney as being the utopian promise of freedom within the relationship between humans and nature.

Language English