References

From Deptford.TV

Berlin Symphony of a Great City

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (German: Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt), alternatively translated as Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis[1], a 1927 German silent film directed by Walter Ruttmann, and co-written by Carl Mayer and Karl Freund, is a prominent example of the city symphony genre. A musical score to accompany the film was written by Edmund Meisel. As a "city symphony" film, it portrays the life of a city, mainly through visual impressions in a semi-documentary style, without the narrative content of more mainstream films, though the sequencing of events can imply a kind of "narrative" of the city's daily life.

Other noted examples of the genre include Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand's 1921 film Manhatta, Dziga Vertov's 1929 film Man with a Movie Camera, Andre Sauvage's 1928 film Etudes sur Paris, and the 1929 Dutch film Regen directed by Mannus Franken and Joris Ivens.

This film represented a sort of break from Ruttmann's earlier "Absolute" films which were abstracts. Some of Vertov's earlier films have been cited as influential on Ruttmann's approach to this film, and it seems the filmmakers mutually inspired one another, as there exist many parallels between this film and the later Man with a Movie Camera.

The film displays the filmmaker's knowledge of Soviet montage theory. Some Socialist political sympathies, or identification with the underclass can be inferred from a few of the edits in the film, though critics have suggested that either Ruttmann avoided a strong position, or else he pursued his aesthetic interests to the extent that they diminished the potential for political content.[3] Ruttmann's own description of the film suggests that his motives were predominantly aesthetic: "Since I began in the cinema, I had the idea of making something out of life, of creating a symphonic film out of the millions of energies that comprise the life of a big city."

further infos:
http://www.archive.org/details/BerlinSymphonyofaGreatCity
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin:_Sinfonie_einer_Gro%C3%9Fstadt
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin:_Die_Sinfonie_der_Gro%C3%9Fstadt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin:_Symphony_of_a_Great_City
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/werke/berlin/
http://www.swr.de/sinfonie/index/ (Thomas Schaadt)
http://www.3sat.de/dynamic/sitegen/bin/sitegen.php?tab=2&source=/kulturzeit/tips/31440/index.html