A masterpiece of early sound film, Enthusiasm deals with the Five Year Plan of the late 1920s. Vertov's stated aim was "to grasp the feverish reality of life in the Don Basin, to convey as true to life as possible its atmosphere of the clash of hammers, of train whistles, of the songs of workers at rest." The film was praised by artists like Charlie Chaplin, was subsequently forgotten, and then rediscovered by the avant-garde movement of the 1960s. We are thrilled to present filmmaker Peter Kubelka’s restoration, which re-syncs image and sound, allowing the viewer to experience what Vertov considered the new language of sound cinema.

Set in a Russian village during World War I, Okraina is Barnet's first sound picture, and as in some other early Russian talkies – Dovzhenko's Ivan, Pudovkin's The Deserter, Vertov's Enthusiasm – the stylized sound track is highly inventive and original. This is a volatile film full of raw emotions, and as Russian film historian Jay Leyda once put it, "You can't be sure whether the next scene will be funny or pathetic, gentle or violent. Seemingly irrational shifts in mood and plot ultimately create a profound sense of war as a state of chaos.” – Jonathan Rosenbaum