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Selected to make a film commemorating the failed 1905 revolution against the czar, Soviet filmmaker, film teacher, and film theorist Sergei Eisenstein decided to concentrate on one exemplary event, the mutiny aboard the battleship Potemkin. Cast with non-actors and structured in five "acts" depicting the uprising and its violent aftermath, Potemkin maximized the dramatic impact of the historical incident by balancing documentary-style realism with Eisenstein's meticulous orchestration of visual composition and editing. Eisenstein used his concept of "intellectual montage" to create sensational and psychological effects, most effectively in the "Odessa Steps sequence" depicting the massacre of innocent citizens by czarist Cossacks. Expanding screen time to emphasize the event's terror, Eisenstein rapidly cut among soldiers' boots implacably advancing down the steps, crowds fleeing, such individual horrors as a mother confronting the soldiers with her dead child, and, most famously, a baby's carriage careening out of control. Using editing to create an impression of violence and carnage greater than anything actually shown onscreen, Eisenstein emphatically revealed the expressive potential of the 30-year-old medium. After its 1926 debut, Potemkin rapidly became world-renowned; even in countries where it was officially banned as Soviet propaganda, the power of Eisenstein's unprecedented cinematic creativity could not be denied. The Odessa Steps sequence has since become perhaps the single most famous and influential four minutes of film ever made.