Film concert Vesnoi / In Spring, GCM Sacile 2004, live music by Ulrich Kodjo Wendt & Anne Wiemann

Mikhail Kaufman: Vesnoi / In the Spring (1929). Poster by Georgi Stenberg & Vladimir Stenberg.

EVENTO MUSICALE / SPECIAL MUSICAL PRESENTATION

VESNOI / NAVESNI / [A PRIMAVERA / IN SPRING] (VUFKU, Kievskaya Fabrika, Kiev, USSR 1929)
    Dir/ph: Mikhail Kaufman; asst: Suiko, Norochov, Nikolai Bykov; premiere: 25.10.1930 (Moscow? Kiev?), 4.1.1931 (Berlin-Halensee, Rote Mühle); 35 mm, 1527 m., 67’ (20 fps), Nederlands Filmmuseum. (1999 positive print, from a nitrate print distributed in the Netherlands in the 1930s by Film Liga. Recently completed with [previously censored?] outtakes found at the NFM.)
    Didascalie in olandese e danese / Dutch & Danish intertitles.
    Musica dal vivo di / Live music by Ulrich Kodjo Wendt & Anne Wiemann.
    Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile, Le Giornate Del Cinema Muto (GCM), 15 Oct 2004

Thomas Tode (GCM): "Mikhail Kaufman’s film-essay Vesnoi (In Spring, USSR 1929) is almost like a twin brother to Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (USSR 1928/29), on which he worked as a cameraman. During the post-production of Man with a Movie Camera they became alienated over the issue of succumbing to pressure from the film administration. Mikhail reproached Vertov for compromising too easily by delivering the film to them before it was ready for screening. They never worked on a film together again. From now on, Mikhail would work only on his own films. The first one was Vesnoi, shot in the Ukraine in the spring of 1929."

"In Vesnoi Mikhail Kaufman pictures the struggle of people against the thawing of the snow, and takes the pulse of waking nature via images of daily life in the town and countryside. Experts have long rated the film a masterpiece. Joris Ivens attested that "he [Mikhail] combines the acid rigorousness of Vertov with the humanistic approach of Cavalcanti". Esfir Shub rejoiced that Kaufman’s camerawork captured "exceptionally beautiful nature, urban and industrial surroundings, the Kolkhozs and Sovkhozs, snow and rain, frost and wind: Unsurpassed, however, is the way in which he filmed the people." Even his brother Dziga praised him, in a letter to El Lissitzky: "He succeeded quite well with material from Spring, adapting Man with a Movie Camera as his model." Quite a (back-handed) compliment, after the alienation of the brothers."

"Kaufman wanted the struggle against the forces of nature to be viewed as a parable for the struggle of Communism, as Eric Barnouw tells us (in his book Documentary. A History of the Non-Fiction Film, Oxford, 1983, p.69): "Portraying the springtime devastation of rain and flood — preliminaries to rebirth — Kaufman makes spring a metaphor for revolution. Portions dealing with this theme, in which religion is seen as a distortion of the symbolism of spring, were generally excised abroad." Among these outtakes were the scenes of drunken women at the graveyard."

"Kaufman was less of a theorist than Vertov, which does not mean his films lack in conception. On the contrary — Kaufman’s approach was based on a rigorous method laid out in his (sole published) essay, "Film Analysis", with many examples from Vesnoi (see the translation of this essay in the chapter "The Last of the Kinocs", in Yuri Tsivian’s Lines of Resistance: Dziga Vertov and the Twenties)." – THOMAS TODE (GCM)

THE MUSIC:

Ulrich Kodjo Wendt (GCM): "At the beginning of the 2000s, film enthusiasts Rasmus Gerlach and Thomas Tode contacted me as a film composer, asking if I would be interested in creating a soundtrack for a poetic experimental film shot in 1929.  I found In Spring, by Mikhail Kaufman, the brother of Dziga Vertov, very inspiring.  So I started to work on it with Anne Wiemann, my collaborator on the score for Im Juli (In July), the 2000 film directed by Fatih Akin (winner of the Golden Bear at the 2004 Berlin Film Festival for her film Gegen die Wand / Head-On). We first performed the music for In Spring live, with saxophone, flute, loops, and diatonic accordion (organetto). We tried to establish a dialogue between the rhythm of the pictures and our music. Wondering, playful, and sometimes comical, film and music dance through natural catastrophes, Stalinism, corrupt clergy, animals behind bars, lovers on benches, children on tricycles, big-shot athletes, cakes that eat themselves, and accordion players bicycling in reverse..."

"It was fun, and a tour de force – an overwhelming adventure.  Even more so, as the version we got to work with was not the same as the one we accompanied shown on the screen that first evening. We noticed – and just continued playing, a blind flight across unknown and fascinating territory.  This version of In Spring turned out to be our favorite, more wild and satirical than the other.  And about a quarter of an hour longer.  Since this experience, we always try to get the long version of In Spring." – ULRICH KODJO WENDT

AA: * One of my favourites at the Festival. Revisited Mikhail Kaufman's wonderful Vesnoi which I had last seen during Moscow Film Festival in 1989 in Dom Kino programmes curated by Naum Kleiman. I don't remember what version that was, but today's version was a special one, with a wonderful and inspired musical interpretation. The duration of this screening was 71 min (1:10'26").