Directed by Dziga Vertov • 1931 • USSR/Ukraine

A radical early sound film from the grandfather of non-fiction, Dziga Vertov’s Enthusiasm captures Ukraine’s Donbas in the throes of revolutionary transformation. Vertov’s vision of industrialisation in motion verges on abstract reverie, taking the viewer into the depths of mines, across electric wires, and up close with smelting furnaces. The soundtrack is equally experimental, eschewing synchronicity and the human voice in favour of an ensemble of industrial clangs and crashes recorded on location. As the Donbas suffers fresh horrors at the hands of Russia, Vertov’s document of modernity on the march is both timely and bittersweet.

ENTHUSIASM • ЕНТУЗIЯЗМ: СИМФОНIЯ ДОНБАСУ
Directed by Dziga Vertov
Edited by Elizaveta Svilova
Cinematography by Boris Tseitlin
Music by Dmitriy Shostakovich

In Russian and Ukrainian with English subtitles