Babylon cinema exhibits “in spring” by Mikhail Kaufman | EUROtoday

I noticed this younger man within the cinema on the massive display screen. He sat on his bicycle handlebar, drove backwards and performed accordion. His smile prolonged on his face just like the accordion in his arms. Laughing, rural and concrete -dressed individuals round him – every thing flickered into the dizzying dance: bicycle, accordion, faces, legs, smile. The metropolis of Kyiv emerged under. The scene performed on a hill and on the identical time confirmed the highest of the town, the spotlight of the enjoyment and the crowning glory of the movie.

It was actually the final sequence of the movie “In Spring”, which was proven confusingly at 12 p.m. in Babylon Mitte in Berlin on June 1st in Babylon in Berlin. Retrospective in all senses – in a movie home from the time of the Weimar Republic, from 1929, just like the movie itself. In this silent movie, the entire spring was handled: within the mountains the snow melts, ice is blown up, small streams are born up, and the majestic river floods the suburbs – the suburbs Kiev.

Everything is shifting. People flock that flows water. The wheels get caught within the mud and transfer once more – a gradual waking up. The Sophienkathedral seems briefly, turned from a aircraft. Children and moms, examined by the solar, and once more youngsters on the streets, as if spring had all hatched like chicks – irrespective of how outdated they are surely. I see this metropolis, its suburbs, its individuals, and consider what occurred in these hundred years between the time of the movie and our place right this moment.

“In spring” is an avant -garde movie by Mikhail Kaufman, who for a very long time was a cameraman of his rather more well-known brother Dziga Vertov – additionally the “eye” of the movie “The man with the camera”, which was shot in city, fashionable Charkiw in the identical 12 months, 1929. Kiev exhibits “in spring”, and every thing – the cycle of nature, the season, the electrical energy of water and the group, the work processes – is proven as an natural stream. The idea of the cinematic “truth of life”: life as it’s, life with out preparation, stunning, which “itself” jumps into the digicam.

It is constructed, cast, sown, pushed; Posters are painted on May 1st, and Easter can also be celebrated: rallies, companies, sporting occasions – right here the agricultural and concrete, the spiritual and Soviety collectively, is proven as an integral a part of life within the 12 months of nice upheaval. In 1929 Stalin was course for industrialization and compelled collectivization of agriculture, which follows the just about full extermination of the Ukrainian peasantry. Religion can also be combated; Many church buildings – additionally in Kyiv – are blown up, monks arrested. In the movie every thing continues to be intact. Kaufman tried to create a cinematic “Ode to the joy” – mentioned a movie historian.

The bikes flip: motor and bicycles, automobiles and trains- and it’s not simply expertise, however a rubber and steel solar run, a form of industrial solar worship. The bike on which the boy drives backwards as if he needed to drive into the previous was produced in a Kharkiwer manufacturing unit that was created in 1923 – from a workshop fled to Charkiw throughout the First World War. Until 1941 a million bicycles had been produced on this manufacturing unit, and after the Second World War it turned the most important bicycle manufacturing unit of the USSR. In my childhood, the bicycle model “Ukraine” nearly turned the style for the bike. In November 2024, on this struggle, the manufacturing unit was closed. But right here in 1929 every thing continues to be imminent.