Enthusiasm

Enthusiasm: The Symphony of Donbass [Russian: Энтузиазм: Симфония Донбасса or Entuziazm: Simfoniya Donbassa], also referred to as Enthusiasm, Donbass Symphony, or The Symphony of the Donbas Basin. Enthusiasm is a 1930 Soviet sound film, directed by Dziga Vertov. Although Enthusiasm is not one of Vertov's more popular films, such as Man with a Movie Camera, the film was the director's first sound film and also the first sound film of the Soviet production company Ukrainfilm. The film is also notable for the fact that it is a documentary filmed on location. Like many of his other films, Vertov worked on Enthusiasm with his wife Elizaveta Svilova. The film's score is considered experimental and avant-garde because of its incorporation of factory, industrial, and other machine sounds. Human speech plays only a small role in the film's sounds. Vertov himself described Enthusiasm as "the lead icebreaker in the column of sound newsreels." As further discussed in the Production section below, Vertov considered the film's "complex interaction of sound with image" to be the work's most significant achievement. The director viewed the film as an extended experiment in which the juxtaposition and misalignment of sound were completely intentional.