ABSTRACT
Audio documentary feature-makers like myself are indebted, whether they know it or
not, to a remarkable pioneering sound feature called Weekend. It was the work of
Walter Ruttmann, perhaps best known as a film-maker for his beautiful abstract study
Berlin: Symphony of a Big City in 1927. Three years later, Ruttmann had returned to
the same subject, but crucially this time, captured the noises and snatched conversa-
tions of the metropolis in sound only. Recorded directly onto the soundtrack of optical
film, Ruttmann championed Weekend as ‘a completely new acoustic art – new in its
means and in its effect’.
