In Spring / Navesni

Shots of the city as it wakes up… its awakening echoes with the lyrical pictures of the rebirth of nature. Kaufman’s attentive camera pauses for a long time on the smiling faces of children, painting a lyrical picture, a confession of love for Kyiv. In In Spring, Kaufman used the principle of the “hidden camera” for the first time.

Later, the well-known French film expert, Georges Sadoul, noted: “In Spring (1929) by Mikhail Kaufman is more of a cinematic poem than a documentary film. In 1930, this film, together with Earth, made an unforgettable impression on us. The film In Spring opened for us a completely new form of documentary cinema — a poem, in which lyrical images of thawing snow and swelling buds conveyed the pathos of the USSR’s advancement through the construction of socialism while not hiding the still existing remnants of the past. I saw this beautiful film thirty-seven years ago and have an unforgettable memory of it.”