“Coal comes out of the earth. Coal for factories. Coal for locomotives. Coal for coke furnaces. Coal has arrived. The conveyors and sorting machines have started up. The aerial chains of coal-filled carts have begun to move. The blast furnaces are operating at full speed. Metal has arrived” - Dziga Vertov

Dziga Vertov’s 1931 film Enthusiasm was created to promote and celebrate Stalin’s Five-Year Plan which took place during the years 1928 to 1932. Donbass, which is now Ukraine, was rich in coal which the Soviet state extracted to fuel its transformation to a modern industrial economy. The film is more propaganda than Vertov’s most celebrated film The Man With a Movie Camera. It seeks to promote, in the fasted paced clatter of machine hammers, coal conveyors, trains and miners, the “enthusiastic” relationship between technology and politics.

The film’s original score was considered especially experimental, and Vertov considered it as important as the film itself. Instead of using a traditional orchestra, Vertov and his team recored and applied a range of industrial factory sounds. However many critics complained but the film’s “inhuman noises.”

As part of the Anthropocene Campus Melbourne, Melbourne percussionists Kaylie Melville and Madi Chwasta from Whichway Ensemble will be re-interpreting Vertov’s experimental film with an original live score. Note: admission is free and open to the general public.

- Video projection - HD sound, colour, 45 min