Notes of a Film Director - Paperbackby Sergei Eisenstein (Author) Sergei Eisenstein is arguably the most important single figure in the history of movies. He was certainly the most versatile. The director of the masterpieces Battleship Potemkin and Alexander Nevsky, Eisenstein also wrote ground breaking essays on film art and taught classes on motion picture production. In this book Eisenstein writes about himself and his films, about film directing and about artists he has worked with.