Wind from the East () is a 1970 film by the Dziga Vertov Group, a radical filmmaking cooperative that, at its core, included Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin. As with most films from this period in Godard's career, directing credit was given to the collective and not himself or other individual filmmakers.
Of the Dziga Vertov Group films, Wind from the East became particularly notable due to Peter Wollen's influential essay about it: "Godard and Counter Cinema: Vent d'est." Wollen contends that Wind from the East exemplifies how Brechtian principles of "epic theatre" can be applied to film as "counter cinema."
Synopsis
The film reflects Gorin and (especially) Godard's interest in divorcing sound from image, as a means of reinventing the language of "bourgeois" commercial cinema.
The soundtrack of the film begins with the story of a kidnapped ALCOA executive but abruptly changes the subject to a lengthy lecture on the history and political context of revolutionary cinema, including Marxist–Leninist self-critique, and a critique of Hollywood's film industry. The visual component of the film features an outdoor natural setting and characters in what appears to be a spaghetti Western film (or a parody thereof). The two components, while separate, frequently interact; the soundtrack occasionally refers to the cinematic tropes that appear onscreen, while the story told in the visuals contains dialogue and sound that overlaps and competes with the primary soundtrack.
Cast
Gian Maria Volonté - Le ranger nordiste
Anne Wiazemsky - La révolutionnaire
Allan Midgette - L'Indien
Christiana Tullio Altan - La jeune bourgeoise
José Varela - La guide
Götz George - Soldier
Reception
John Simon described Wind from the East as 'a piece of infantile Maoist propaganda, so boring, antifilmic, sloppily made, and yes, insane, I see no point in a detailed description of it'.
References
Further reading
Julia Lesage, "Godard-Gorin's Wind from the East: Looking at a film politically," Jump Cut, no. 4, 1974, pp. 18–23. https://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC04folder/WindfromEast.html .