Enthusiasm. The Donbass Symphony
UdSSR 1930, R / Director: Dziga Vertov; K / Camera: Boris Cejtlin, K. Kulaev; S/Ko-Regie / Assistant/Co-Director: Elisaveta Svilova; M / Music Score: N. Timofeev; Ton / Sound: P. Schtro, 68‘ · 35 mm, russ. ZT, dt. UT / Russian intertitles, German subtitles
With an introduction by Barbara Wurm, Berlin
This documentary film, which was filmed in mines and factories in the Donbass region and at the 11th Congress of the Ukrainian Communist Party in Kharkiv, celebrates the industrialisation heralded by the first five-year plan (1928–1933), and the enthusiasm for work that it engendered, in three symphonic movements. In the first movement, religion and alcoholism are presented as the greatest obstacles to the establishment of a Socialist society. The second movement intones the Donbass industrial complex: mining wagons at a standstill indicate production backwardness, while workers hammering at the coalface chant in unison that coal production is being increased. The final third movement ends with a vision of an industrial landscape. However, the film is by no means just an anthem to work, one of the most important pillars of the political system, but is also a medial sound experiment. Recorded using a portable sound system developed especially for this film and weighing over 1,000 kilograms, we hear industrial and medial sound images that anticipate the musique concrète which would emerge 15 years later.