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‘Will we ever see Potemkin?’: The historical reception and censorship of Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin in Belgium (1926–32)

Abstract Although Belgium was considered during the interwar years to be a liberal film market without any adult film censorship at all, Soviet movies were heavily boycotted. Just as in other countries, Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (1925) was a highly contested and controversial case in point. After a short overview of Potemkin's turbulent historical reception and censorship in neighbouring countries such as France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, this article concentrates upon the exhibition career and the reception of the film in Belgium, more specifically upon how various groups and institutions in Belgian society joined forces in order to prevent the movie from being shown. The article tries to understand Potemkin as a meaningful social event and as a site of struggle, where the film became the target of intense pressures, ideological debate and different types of censorship. These ‘disciplining’ forces ranged from central government, the national film control board and local municipalities to various political groups and film trade organizations.