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Restored print courtesy of the Austrian Film Museum.

Enthusiasm: Symphony of the Donbass (Entuziazm: Sinfoniya Donbassa) (U.S.S.R., 1930);
Kino-Pravda, Nos. 1-8 (U.S.S.R., 1922)

Enthusiasm: Symphony of the Donbass (1930)
February 12, 2012 - 7:00 pm
Billy Wilder Theater
In-person: 
Jan-Christopher Horak, UCLA Film & Television Archive.

Directed by Dziga Vertov

Vertov’s first sound film is a masterpiece of Russian avant-garde cinema, disguised as a paean to coal and steel workers, and has inspired directors such as Charlie Chaplin, Joris Ivens, and Wang Bing. Of Vertov’s innovative approach Chaplin wrote, "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."

Cinematographer: Boris Zeitlin.

35mm, b/w, in Russian w/ English translation, 67 min.

Prints courtesy of the Austrian Film Museum

Kino-Pravda, Nos. 1-8 (U.S.S.R., 1922)

Directed by Dziga Vertov

Among Vertov’s most radical works, the 23 newsreel issues of Kino-Pravda (1922-1925), presented in this series offer a rare chance to witness, as Yuri Tsivian wrote, “a time-lapse movie showing the growth of Soviet avant-garde cinema (born in 1922, not in 1924 as we are normally told).” In these first eight Kino-Pravdas, Vertov begins to play with then-novel film techniques, including dialectical editing, to transform “facts” into political statements.

35mm, b/w, silent w/ Russian intertitles and live English translation, 18fps, 78 min.

Part of: 
Kino-Eye: The Revolutionary Cinema of Dziga Vertov