[Frameworks] Looking for films about the radio and on air diffusion

[Chuck Kleinhans]

The opening of Dziga Vertov’s Enthusiasm (Symphony of the Don Basin) used radio transmission in an interesting way.  A parade with a band is shown and the sound is present, in synch.  As I remember to make the shot, done earlier than when portable sound recording technology was available, the sound person carried a cabled mike along side the marching musicians.  The cable ran back to the street-side radio station, which live broadcasted back to Moscow (from Kiev, I believe) where the signal was recorded on studio equipment.

Vertov often used the image of public address technology (speakers in the street, etc.) and technologically mediated public performance of music, etc. even in his silent era films.  His sound film, Three Songs of Lenin, includes images and sounds of one or more young women listening to the radio, showing their connection to the entire nation, and Modernity provided by the state (earlier they were shown casting off Muslim veils).

Of course famous radio broadcasts are often used as historical marker clips in documentaries (e.g. FDR to Congress—and the nation by radio—about Pearl Harbor) and in experimental work such as Bruce Connor’s Report with radio audio of the JFK assassination.

Chuck Kleinhans





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