This film is part of Free
Metal Factories of the Donets Basin, Russia
The visual spectacle of manufacturing steel from iron ore in Ukraine.
Overview
The French Pathé Frères Company were the foremost amongst several producers of travelogues in the 1900s and 1910s about interesting regions across the globe. Some concerned themselves with industries such as this look inside one of the great steel foundries of the Donets basin in Ukraine. The film follows the iron ore from the wagons transported to the foundry by steam train, from where the workmen shovel it into the blast furnaces to be turned into pig iron. The hellish red tinting of the film evokes the colour of the molten iron as it runs into the moulds. Men rake the slag and roll the wagons but there is a high level of mechanisation too. The iron ingots are transported to the Bessemer convertor where it is made into steel, then to the rolling mill to be made into a finished product.
Please note the intertitles in the film are in German with no English subtitle translation.
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