8. Sergei Eisenstein
In the history of filmmaking, four films stand out as most significant in terms of influence on succeeding films: D.W Griffith's Birth of a Nation, Orson Welle's Citizen Kane, George Lucas's Star Wars, and Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin which had profoundly impacted not just propaganda films but also the entire philosophy behind film editing. With Battleship Potemkin, Eisenstein unleashed his theory of "montage" as the ultimate editing weapon in which juxtaposing images are used to convey an emotional effect. After Potemkin, Eisenstein became one of the first film theorists and through his later films such as October, Alexander Nevsky, and two part epic Ivan the Terrible helped develop even more groundbreaking cinematic techniques. Although Battleship Potemkin seems simplistic today and is rarely mentioned among the all-time greats as it used to be, Eisenstein still holds a key place in film history as few people have been more integral to the development of so many key film theories and techniques.