The documentary that portrays industrial society of the Donbass (eastern Ukraine’s region). This is the first Ukrainian sound film in which real industrial and routine sounds served to create an independent music image.
Thursday / 28.04.2016 / 20:00
New Horizons Art House Cinema, 19a-21 Kazimierza Wielkiego St
Admission is free
Ukraine (USSR), 1930, 95 min.
Colour: black and white
Language: Ukrainian / Russian
Directed by DzigaVertov
Screenplay by DzigaVertov
Cinematography by Boris Zeitlin
Music by Dmitri Shostakovich, Nikolay Timofeev
Production: Ukrayinfilm
Enthusiasm (Symphony of the Donbass) is the first Ukrainian sound film. Dziga Vertov and his team used new cinematographic opportunities to shoot a documentary depicting the life of miners in Donbass mines and their endeavor to fulfill the tasks, given by the Soviet authorities. The film was dedicated to the First Five Year Plan, glorified industrialization and collectivization. The film presents a whole palette of avant-garde solutions and subordinated to the Soviet ideology. The most noticeable film’s innovation is the involvement of real industrial and routine sounds, which not only illustrated the visual range, but also served to create an independent music image. They say, that after watching the film, Charlie Chaplin stated, ‘I would never have believed it possible to assemble mechanical noises to create such beauty. One of the most superb symphonies I have known. Dziga Vertov is a musician’. The film was shot in 1930. This year the Ukrainisation programme was cut down, but the documentary contained many indications of the Ukrainisation in Donbass. So, very soon the film was ‘shelved’.
Dziga Vertov
David Kaufman, also known as Denis Kaufman or Dziga Vertov.Born in1896 in Białystok, Poland. Since1918 – Soviet documentary film and newsreel director, screenwriter, theorist. One of the most famous masters of avant-garde documentary. In 1917, at the age of 22, Vertov began editing for the Kino-Nedelya, the Moscow Cinema Committee's weekly film series, and the first newsreel series in Russia. In 1922 Vertov started the Kino-Pravda series. Kino-Pravda (literally translated, "film truth") continued Vertov's agit-prop bent. Vertov’s filming practices and theories influenced the cinéma vérité style of documentary movie-making and the Dziga Vertov Group, a radical film-making cooperative which was active in the 1960`s. Vertov’s creativity was limited by the USSR. With no ability to shoot independent films, he has limited its activities to the assembly of newsreels. Died in 1954. In the 2012 Sight & Sound poll, critics voted Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera (1929) the 8th best film ever made
Filmography (selected):
1924 Cinema Eye
1924 Soviet Toys
1926 A Sixth Part of the World
1929 Man with a Movie Camera
1930 Enthusiasm (Symphony of the Donbass)
Share This:
