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Dziga Vertov (russian: Дзига Вертов, born David Abelevich Kaufman, russian: Дави́д А́белевич Ка́уфман, and also known as Denis Kaufman; – 12 February 1954) was a
Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
pioneer
documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...
and
newsreel A newsreel is a form of short documentary film, containing news stories and items of topical interest, that was prevalent between the 1910s and the mid 1970s. Typically presented in a cinema, newsreels were a source of current affairs, inform ...
director, as well as a cinema theorist. His filming practices and theories influenced the
cinéma vérité Cinéma vérité (, , ; "truthful cinema") is a style of documentary filmmaking developed by Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, inspired by Dziga Vertov's theory about Kino-Pravda. It combines improvisation with use of the camera to unveil truth or ...
style of documentary movie-making and the
Dziga Vertov Group The Dziga Vertov Group (french: Groupe Dziga Vertov) was formed around 1969 by politically active filmmakers including Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin. Their films are defined primarily for Brechtian forms, Marxist ideology, and a lack of p ...
, a radical film-making cooperative which was active from 1968 to 1972. He was a member of the
Kinoks The Kinoks (russian: Киноки, kino-oki, cinema-eyes) were a collective of Soviet filmmakers in the 1920s, consisting of Dziga Vertov, Elizaveta Svilova and Mikhail Kaufman. According to Annette Michelson, Georges Sadoul states the collectiv ...
collective, with
Elizaveta Svilova Yelizaveta Ignatevna Svilova (russian: Елизаве́та Игна́тьевна Сви́лова, rendered in Latin as Elizaveta Svilova) (5 September 1900, Moscow – 11 November 1975, Moscow) was a Russian filmmaker and film editor. She is p ...
and
Mikhail Kaufman Mikhail Abelovich Kaufman (russian: Михаи́л А́белевич Ка́уфман; 1897 – March 11, 1980) was a Russian cinematographer and photographer. He was the younger brother of filmmaker Dziga Vertov (Denis Kaufman) and the older ...
. In the 2012 ''
Sight & Sound ''Sight and Sound'' (also spelled ''Sight & Sound'') is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI). It conducts the well-known, once-a-decade ''Sight and Sound'' Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time, ongoing ...
'' poll, critics voted Vertov's ''
Man with a Movie Camera ''Man with a Movie Camera'' (russian: Человек с киноаппаратом, translit=Chelovek s kinoapparatom) is an experimental 1929 Soviet silent documentary film, directed by Dziga Vertov, filmed by his brother Mikhail Kaufman, an ...
'' (1929) the eighth-greatest film ever made. Vertov's younger brothers Boris Kaufman and
Mikhail Kaufman Mikhail Abelovich Kaufman (russian: Михаи́л А́белевич Ка́уфман; 1897 – March 11, 1980) was a Russian cinematographer and photographer. He was the younger brother of filmmaker Dziga Vertov (Denis Kaufman) and the older ...
were also noted filmmakers, as was his wife,
Yelizaveta Svilova Yelizaveta Ignatevna Svilova (russian: Елизаве́та Игна́тьевна Сви́лова, rendered in Latin as Elizaveta Svilova) (5 September 1900, Moscow – 11 November 1975, Moscow) was a Russian filmmaker and film editor. She is p ...
.


Biography


Early years

Vertov was born David Abelevich Kaufman into a
Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""T ...
ish family in
Białystok Białystok is the largest city in northeastern Poland and the capital of the Podlaskie Voivodeship. It is the tenth-largest city in Poland, second in terms of population density, and thirteenth in area. Białystok is located in the Białystok U ...
,
Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...
, then a part of the
Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War ...
. He Russified his Jewish name and
patronymic A patronymic, or patronym, is a component of a personal name based on the given name of one's father, grandfather (avonymic), or an earlier male ancestor. Patronymics are still in use, including mandatory use, in many countries worldwide, alt ...
, David Abelevich, to Denis Arkadievich at some point after 1918. Vertov studied music at Białystok Conservatory until his family fled from the invading
German Army The German Army (, "army") is the land component of the armed forces of Germany. The present-day German Army was founded in 1955 as part of the newly formed West German ''Bundeswehr'' together with the ''Marine'' (German Navy) and the ''Luftwaf ...
to
Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
in 1915. The Kaufmans soon settled in
Petrograd Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
, where Vertov began writing
poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek '' poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meani ...
,
science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...
, and
satire Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming o ...
. In 1916–1917 Vertov was studying medicine at the Psychoneurological Institute in Saint Petersburg and experimenting with "sound collages" in his free time. He eventually adopted the name "Dziga Vertov", which translates loosely from
Ukrainian Ukrainian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Ukraine * Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe * Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine * So ...
as 'spinning top'.


Early writings

Vertov is known for many early writings, mainly while still in school, that focus on the individual versus the perceptive nature of the camera lens, which he was known to call his "second eye". Most of Vertov's early work was unpublished, and few manuscripts survived after the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
, though some material surfaced in later films and documentaries created by Vertov and his brothers, Boris Kaufman and
Mikhail Kaufman Mikhail Abelovich Kaufman (russian: Михаи́л А́белевич Ка́уфман; 1897 – March 11, 1980) was a Russian cinematographer and photographer. He was the younger brother of filmmaker Dziga Vertov (Denis Kaufman) and the older ...
. Vertov is known for quotes on perception, and its ineffability, in relation to the nature of qualia (sensory experiences).


After the October Revolution

After the
Bolshevik Revolution The October Revolution,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was a key mom ...
of 1917, at the age of 22, Vertov began editing for ''Kino-Nedelya'' (, the Moscow Cinema Committee's weekly film series, and the first newsreel series in Russia), which first came out in June 1918. While working for ''Kino-Nedelya'' he met his future wife, the film director and editor,
Elizaveta Svilova Yelizaveta Ignatevna Svilova (russian: Елизаве́та Игна́тьевна Сви́лова, rendered in Latin as Elizaveta Svilova) (5 September 1900, Moscow – 11 November 1975, Moscow) was a Russian filmmaker and film editor. She is p ...
, who at the time was working as an editor at Goskino. She began collaborating with Vertov, beginning as his editor but becoming assistant and co-director in subsequent films, such as ''
Man with a Movie Camera ''Man with a Movie Camera'' (russian: Человек с киноаппаратом, translit=Chelovek s kinoapparatom) is an experimental 1929 Soviet silent documentary film, directed by Dziga Vertov, filmed by his brother Mikhail Kaufman, an ...
'' (1929), and ''
Three Songs About Lenin ''Three Songs About Lenin'' (russian: Три песни о Ленине, 1934) is a documentary sound film by Ukrainian-Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertov. It is based on three admiring songs sung by anonymous people in Soviet Russia about Vladim ...
'' (1934). Vertov worked on the ''Kino-Nedelya'' series for three years, helping establish and run a film-car on
Mikhail Kalinin Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin (russian: link=no, Михаи́л Ива́нович Кали́нин ; 3 June 1946), known familiarly by Soviet citizens as "Kalinych", was a Soviet politician and Old Bolshevik revolutionary. He served as head of st ...
's
agit-train An agit-train (Russian: агитпоезд) was a locomotive engine with special auxiliary cars outfitted for propaganda purposes by the Bolshevik government of Soviet Russia during the time of the Russian Civil War, War Communism, and the New ...
during the ongoing
Russian Civil War {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Russian Civil War , partof = the Russian Revolution and the aftermath of World War I , image = , caption = Clockwise from top left: {{flatlist, *Soldiers ...
between
Communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, ...
s and
counterrevolutionaries A counter-revolutionary or an anti-revolutionary is anyone who opposes or resists a revolution, particularly one who acts after a revolution in order to try to overturn it or reverse its course, in full or in part. The adjective "counter-revoluti ...
. Some of the cars on the agit-trains were equipped with actors for live performances or
printing press A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in which the ...
es; Vertov's had equipment to shoot, develop, edit, and project film. The trains went to battlefronts on agitation-propaganda missions intended primarily to bolster the morale of the troops; they were also intended to stir up revolutionary fervor of the masses. In 1919, Vertov compiled newsreel footage for his documentary ''Anniversary of the Revolution;'' he also supervised the filming of his project ''The Battle for Tsaritsyn'' (1919). in 1921 he compiled ''History of the
Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government polici ...
.'' The so-called "Council of Three," a group issuing manifestoes in LEF, a radical Russian newsmagazine, was established in 1922; the group's "three" were Vertov, his (future) wife and editor Elizaveta Svilova, and his brother and
cinematographer The cinematographer or director of photography (sometimes shortened to DP or DOP) is the person responsible for the photographing or recording of a film, television production, music video or other live action piece. The cinematographer is the ch ...
Mikhail Kaufman Mikhail Abelovich Kaufman (russian: Михаи́л А́белевич Ка́уфман; 1897 – March 11, 1980) was a Russian cinematographer and photographer. He was the younger brother of filmmaker Dziga Vertov (Denis Kaufman) and the older ...
. Vertov's interest in machinery led to a curiosity about the mechanical basis of
cinema Cinema may refer to: Film * Cinematography, the art of motion-picture photography * Film or movie, a series of still images that create the illusion of a moving image ** Film industry, the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking ...
. His statement "We: Variant of a Manifesto" was published in the first issue of Kino-Fot, published by Aleksei Gan in 1922. It commenced with a distinction between "kinoks" and other approaches to the emergent cinematic industry: :"We call ourselves kinoks – as opposed to "cinematographers", a herd of junkmen doing rather well peddling their rags. :We see no connection between true kinochestvo and the cunning and calculation of the profiteers. :We consider the psychological Russo-German film-drama – weighed down with apparitions and childhood memories – an absurdity."


''Kino-Pravda''

In 1922, the year that '' Nanook of the North'' was released, Vertov started the '' Kino-Pravda'' series. The series took its title from the official government newspaper ''
Pravda ''Pravda'' ( rus, Правда, p=ˈpravdə, a=Ru-правда.ogg, "Truth") is a Russian broadsheet newspaper, and was the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when it was one of the most influential papers in the ...
''. "Kino-Pravda" (literally translated, "film truth") continued Vertov's agit-prop bent. "The Kino-Pravda group began its work in a basement in the centre of Moscow", Vertov explained. He called it damp and dark. There was an earthen floor and holes one stumbled into at every turn. Vertov said, "This dampness prevented our reels of lovingly edited film from sticking together properly, rusted our scissors and our splicers. Vertov's driving vision, expounded in his frequent essays, was to capture "film truth"—that is, fragments of actuality which, when organized together, have a deeper truth that cannot be seen with the naked eye. In the ''Kino-Pravda'' series, Vertov focused on everyday experiences, eschewing bourgeois concerns and filming marketplaces, bars, and schools instead, sometimes with a hidden camera, without asking permission first. Usually, the episodes of ''Kino-Pravda'' did not include reenactments or stagings. (One exception is the segment about the trial of the Social Revolutionaries: the scenes of the selling of the newspapers on the streets and the people reading the papers in the trolley were both staged for the camera.) The cinematography is simple, functional, unelaborate—perhaps a result of Vertov's disinterest in both "beauty" and the "grandeur of fiction". Twenty-three issues of the series were produced over a period of three years; each issue lasted about twenty minutes and usually covered three topics. The stories were typically descriptive, not narrative, and included vignettes and exposés, showing for instance the renovation of a trolley system, the organization of farmers into communes, and the trial of Social Revolutionaries; one story shows starvation in the nascent
Communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, ...
state. Propagandistic tendencies are also present, but with more subtlety, in the episode featuring the construction of an airport: one shot shows the
Tsar Tsar ( or ), also spelled ''czar'', ''tzar'', or ''csar'', is a title used by East and South Slavic monarchs. The term is derived from the Latin word ''caesar'', which was intended to mean "emperor" in the European medieval sense of the ter ...
's tanks helping prepare a foundation, with an intertitle reading "Tanks on the labor front". Vertov clearly intended an active relationship with his audience in the series—in the final segment he includes contact information—but by the 14th episode the series had become so experimental that some critics dismissed Vertov's efforts as "insane". Vertov responded to their criticisms with the assertion that the critics were hacks nipping "revolutionary effort" in the bud, and concluded an essay with a promise to "explode art's
tower of Babel The Tower of Babel ( he, , ''Mīgdal Bāḇel'') narrative in Genesis 11:1–9 is an origin myth meant to explain why the world's peoples speak different languages. According to the story, a united human race speaking a single language and mi ...
". In Vertov's view, "art's tower of Babel" was the subservience of cinematic technique to narrative—what film theorist
Noël Burch Noël Burch (born 1932) is an American film theorist and movie maker who moved to France at a young age. Burch is known for his contribution to terms commonly used by film scholars (such as institutional mode of representation (IMR)) and for h ...
terms the institutional mode of representation—which would come to dominate the
classical Hollywood cinema Classical Hollywood cinema is a term used in film criticism to describe both a narrative and visual style of filmmaking which became characteristic of American cinema between the 1910s (rapidly after World War I) and the 1960s. It eventually b ...
. By this point in his career, Vertov was clearly and emphatically dissatisfied with narrative tradition, and expresses his hostility towards dramatic fiction of any kind both openly and repeatedly; he regarded drama as another "opiate of the masses". Vertov freely admitted one criticism leveled at his efforts on the ''Kino-Pravda'' series—that the series, while influential, had a limited release. By the end of the ''Kino-Pravda'' series, Vertov made liberal use of
stop motion Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames i ...
, freeze frames, and other cinematic "artificialities", giving rise to criticisms not just of his trenchant dogmatism, but also of his cinematic technique. Vertov explains himself in "On 'Kinopravda' ": in editing "chance film clippings" together for the Kino-Nedelia series, he "began to doubt the necessity of a literary connection between individual visual elements spliced together.... This work served as the point of departure for 'Kinopravda' ". Towards the end of the same essay, Vertov mentions an upcoming project which seems likely to be ''
Man with a Movie Camera ''Man with a Movie Camera'' (russian: Человек с киноаппаратом, translit=Chelovek s kinoapparatom) is an experimental 1929 Soviet silent documentary film, directed by Dziga Vertov, filmed by his brother Mikhail Kaufman, an ...
'' (1929), calling it an "experimental film" made without a scenario; just three paragraphs above, Vertov mentions a scene from ''Kino Pravda'' which should be quite familiar to viewers of ''Man with the Movie Camera'': the peasant works, and so does the urban woman, and so too, the woman film editor selecting the negative... "


''Man with a Movie Camera''

With Lenin's admission of limited private enterprise through the
New Economic Policy The New Economic Policy (NEP) () was an economic policy of the Soviet Union proposed by Vladimir Lenin in 1921 as a temporary expedient. Lenin characterized the NEP in 1922 as an economic system that would include "a free market and capitalism, ...
(NEP) of 1921, Russia began receiving fiction films from afar, an occurrence that Vertov regarded with undeniable suspicion, calling drama a "corrupting influence" on the proletarian sensibility ("On 'Kinopravda' ", 1924). By this time Vertov had been using his newsreel series as a pedestal to vilify dramatic fiction for several years; he continued his criticisms even after the warm reception of
Sergei Eisenstein Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (russian: Сергей Михайлович Эйзенштейн, p=sʲɪrˈɡʲej mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪtɕ ɪjzʲɪnˈʂtʲejn, 2=Sergey Mikhaylovich Eyzenshteyn; 11 February 1948) was a Soviet film director, scree ...
's ''
Battleship Potemkin '' Battleship Potemkin'' (russian: Бронено́сец «Потёмкин», ''Bronenosets Potyomkin''), sometimes rendered as ''Battleship Potyomkin'', is a 1925 Soviet silent drama film produced by Mosfilm. Directed and co-written by S ...
'' (1925). ''Potemkin'' was a heavily fictionalized film telling the story of a mutiny on a battleship which came about as a result of the sailors' mistreatment; the film was an obvious but skillful propaganda piece glorifying the proletariat. Vertov lost his job at
Sovkino Goskino USSR (russian: link=Yes, Госкино СССР) is the abbreviated name for the USSR State Committee for Cinematography (Государственный комитет по кинематографии СССР) in the Soviet Union. It w ...
in January 1927, possibly as a result of criticizing a film which effectively preaches the line of the
Communist Party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of '' The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel ...
. He was fired for making ''A Sixth Part of the World: Advertising and the Soviet Universe'' for the State Trade Organization into a propaganda film, selling the Soviet as an advanced society under the NEP, instead of showing how they fit into the world economy. The Ukraine State Studio hired Vertov to create ''Man with a Movie Camera''. Vertov says in his essay "The Man with a Movie Camera" that he was fighting "for a decisive cleaning up of film-language, for its complete separation from the language of theater and literature". By the later segments of ''Kino-Pravda'', Vertov was experimenting heavily, looking to abandon what he considered film clichés (and receiving criticism for it); his experimentation was even more pronounced and dramatic by the time of ''Man with a Movie Camera'', which was filmed in
Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inva ...
. Some have criticized the obvious stagings in this film as being at odds with Vertov's credos of "life as it is" and "life caught unawares": the scene of the woman getting out of bed and getting dressed is obviously staged, as is the reversed shot of the chess pieces being pushed off a chess board and the tracking shot that films Mikhail Kaufman riding in a car filming a third car. However, Vertov's two credos, often used interchangeably, are in fact distinct, as Yuri Tsivian comments in the
commentary track An audio commentary is an additional audio track, usually digital, consisting of a lecture or comments by one or more speakers, that plays in real time with a video. Commentaries can be serious or entertaining in nature, and can add informatio ...
on the DVD for ''Man with the Movie Camera:'' for Vertov, "life as it is" means to record life as it would be without the camera present. "Life caught unawares" means to record life when surprised, and perhaps provoked, by the presence of a camera. This explanation contradicts the common assumption that for Vertov "life caught unawares" meant "life caught unaware of the camera". All of these shots might conform to Vertov's credo "caught unawares". His slow motion, fast motion, and other camera techniques were a way to dissect the image, Mikhail Kaufman stated in an interview. It was to be the honest truth of perception. For example, in ''Man with a Movie Camera'', two trains are shown almost melting into each other. Although we are taught to see trains as not riding that close, Vertov tried to portray the actual sight of two passing trains. Mikhail spoke about Eisenstein's films as being different from his and his brother's in that Eisenstein "came from the theatre, in the theatre one directs dramas, one strings beads". "We all felt...that through documentary film we could develop a new kind of art. Not only documentary art, or the art of chronicle, but rather an art based on images, the creation of an image-oriented journalism", Mikhail explained. More than even film truth, ''Man with a Movie Camera'' was supposed to be a way to make those in the Soviet Union more efficient in their actions. He slowed down his movements, such as the decision whether to jump or not. You can see the decision in his face, a psychological dissection for the audience. He wanted a peace between the actions of man and the actions of a machine, for them to be, in a sense, one.


''Cine-Eye''

"Cine-Eye" is a montage method developed by Dziga Vertov and first formulated in his work "WE: Variant of a Manifesto" in 1919. Dziga Vertov believed his concept of ''Kino-Glaz'', or "Cine Eye" in English, would help contemporary "man" evolve from a flawed creature into a higher, more precise form. He compared man unfavorably to machines: "In the face of the machine we are ashamed of man’s inability to control himself, but what are we to do if we find the unerring ways of electricity more exciting than the disorderly haste of active people .. As he put it in a 1923 credo, "I am the Cine-Eye. I am the mechanical eye. I the machine show you the world as only I can see it. I emancipate myself henceforth and forever from human immobility. ''I am in constant motion...'' My path leads towards the creation of a fresh perception of the world. I can thus decipher a world that you do not know." Like other Russian filmmakers, he attempted to connect his ideas and techniques to the advancement of the aims of the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
. Whereas
Sergei Eisenstein Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (russian: Сергей Михайлович Эйзенштейн, p=sʲɪrˈɡʲej mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪtɕ ɪjzʲɪnˈʂtʲejn, 2=Sergey Mikhaylovich Eyzenshteyn; 11 February 1948) was a Soviet film director, scree ...
viewed his montage of attractions as a creative tool through which the film-viewing masses could be subjected to "emotional and psychological influence" and therefore able to perceive "the ideological aspect" of the films they were watching, Vertov believed the Cine-Eye would influence the actual evolution of man, "from a bumbling citizen through the poetry of the machine to the perfect electric man". Vertov surrounded himself with others who were also firm believers in his ideas. These were the Kinoks, other Russian filmmakers who would assist him in his hopes of making "cine-eye" a success. Vertov believed film was too "romantic" and "theatricalised" due to the influence of literature, theater, and music, and that these psychological film-dramas "prevent man from being as precise as a stopwatch and hamper his desire for kinship with the machine". He desired to move away from "the pre-Revolutionary 'fictional' models" of filmmaking to one based on the rhythm of machines, seeking to "bring creative joy to all mechanical labour"Vertov 1922, p. 71 and to "bring men closer to machines". In May 1927 Vertov moved to Ukraine, and the Cine-Eye movement broke up.


Late career

Vertov's successful career continued into the 1930s. '' Enthusiasm: Symphony of the Donbass'' (1931), an examination into Soviet miners, has been called a 'sound film', with sound recorded on location, and these mechanical sounds woven together, producing a symphony-like effect. Three years later, ''
Three Songs About Lenin ''Three Songs About Lenin'' (russian: Три песни о Ленине, 1934) is a documentary sound film by Ukrainian-Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertov. It is based on three admiring songs sung by anonymous people in Soviet Russia about Vladim ...
'' (1934) looked at the revolution through the eyes of the Russian peasantry. For his film, Vertov had been hired by
Mezhrabpomfilm Mezhrabpomfilm (russian: Межрабпомфильм), from the word ''film'', and the Russian acronym for Workers International Relief or Workers International Aid (russian: Международная рабочая помощь, was a German-Ru ...
. The film, finished in January 1934 for Lenin's obit, was only publicly released in the Soviet Union in November of that year. From July 1934 it was shown at private screenings to various high-ranking Soviet officials and also to prominent foreigners including H. G. Wells, William Bullitt, and others, and it was screened at the
Venice Film Festival The Venice Film Festival or Venice International Film Festival ( it, Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica della Biennale di Venezia, "International Exhibition of Cinematographic Art of the Venice Biennale") is an annual film festival h ...
in August 1934. A new version of the film was released in 1938, including a longer sequence to reflect Stalin's achievements at the end of the film and leaving out footage of "enemies" of that time. Today there exists a 1970 reconstruction by
Yelizaveta Svilova Yelizaveta Ignatevna Svilova (russian: Елизаве́та Игна́тьевна Сви́лова, rendered in Latin as Elizaveta Svilova) (5 September 1900, Moscow – 11 November 1975, Moscow) was a Russian filmmaker and film editor. She is p ...
. With the rise and official sanction of
socialist realism Socialist realism is a style of idealized realistic art that was developed in the Soviet Union and was the official style in that country between 1932 and 1988, as well as in other socialist countries after World War II. Socialist realism is ch ...
in 1934, Vertov was forced to cut his personal artistic output significantly, eventually becoming little more than an editor for Soviet newsreels. ''
Lullaby A lullaby (), or cradle song, is a soothing song or piece of music that is usually played for (or sung to) children (for adults see music and sleep). The purposes of lullabies vary. In some societies they are used to pass down cultural knowledg ...
'', perhaps the last film in which Vertov was able to maintain his artistic vision, was released in 1937. Dziga Vertov died of cancer in Moscow in 1954.


Family

Vertov's brother Boris Kaufman was a cinematographer who worked with
Jean Vigo Jean Vigo (; 26 April 1905 – 5 October 1934) was a French film director who helped establish poetic realism in film in the 1930s. His work influenced French New Wave cinema of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Biography Vigo was born to Emil ...
on ''
L'Atalante ''L'Atalante'', also released as ''Le Chaland qui passe'' ("The Passing Barge"), is a 1934 French film written and directed by Jean Vigo, and starring Jean Dasté, Dita Parlo and Michel Simon. After the difficult release of his controversial ...
'' (1934) and much later for directors such as
Elia Kazan Elia Kazan (; born Elias Kazantzoglou ( el, Ηλίας Καζαντζόγλου); September 7, 1909 – September 28, 2003) was an American film and theatre director, producer, screenwriter and actor, described by ''The New York Times'' as "one o ...
in the United States who won an Oscar for his work on ''
On the Waterfront ''On the Waterfront'' is a 1954 American crime drama film, directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg. It stars Marlon Brando and features Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger, Pat Henning, and Eva Marie Saint in her film debut. ...
''. His other brother,
Mikhail Kaufman Mikhail Abelovich Kaufman (russian: Михаи́л А́белевич Ка́уфман; 1897 – March 11, 1980) was a Russian cinematographer and photographer. He was the younger brother of filmmaker Dziga Vertov (Denis Kaufman) and the older ...
, worked with Vertov on his films until he became a documentarian in his own right. Mikhail Kaufman's directorial debut was the film ''
In Spring Symphony No. 2 in A major, subtitled ''Im Frühling'' or ''In Spring'', is the second symphony by American composer John Knowles Paine. History The symphony was composed in 1879 and published in Boston in 1880,Kenneth C. Roberts and John C. Sc ...
'' (1929). In 1923, Vertov married his long-time collaborator
Elizaveta Svilova Yelizaveta Ignatevna Svilova (russian: Елизаве́та Игна́тьевна Сви́лова, rendered in Latin as Elizaveta Svilova) (5 September 1900, Moscow – 11 November 1975, Moscow) was a Russian filmmaker and film editor. She is p ...
.


Influence and legacy

Vertov's legacy still lives on today. His ideas are echoed in
cinéma vérité Cinéma vérité (, , ; "truthful cinema") is a style of documentary filmmaking developed by Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, inspired by Dziga Vertov's theory about Kino-Pravda. It combines improvisation with use of the camera to unveil truth or ...
, the movement of the 1960s named after Vertov's ''Kino-Pravda''. The 1960s and 1970s saw an international revival of interest in Vertov. The independent, exploratory style of Vertov influenced and inspired many filmmakers and directors like the Situationist
Guy Debord Guy-Ernest Debord (; ; 28 December 1931 – 30 November 1994) was a French Marxist theorist, philosopher, filmmaker, critic of work, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situation ...
and independent companies such as Vertov Industries in Hawaii. The
Dziga Vertov Group The Dziga Vertov Group (french: Groupe Dziga Vertov) was formed around 1969 by politically active filmmakers including Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin. Their films are defined primarily for Brechtian forms, Marxist ideology, and a lack of p ...
borrowed his name. In 1960,
Jean Rouch Jean Rouch (; 31 May 1917 – 18 February 2004) was a French filmmaker and anthropologist. He is considered one of the founders of cinéma vérité in France. Rouch's practice as a filmmaker, for over 60 years in Africa, was characterized b ...
used Vertov's filming theory when making ''Chronicle of a Summer''. His partner
Edgar Morin Edgar Morin (; ; born Edgar Nahoum; 8 July 1921) is a French philosopher and sociologist of the theory of information who has been recognized for his work on complexity and "complex thought" ( pensée complexe), and for his scholarly contributio ...
coined the term ''cinéma vérité'' when describing the style, using direct translation of Vertov's ''KinoPravda''. The
Free Cinema Free Cinema was a documentary film movement that emerged in the United Kingdom in the mid-1950s. The term referred to an absence of propagandised intent or deliberate box office appeal. Co-founded by Lindsay Anderson (but he later disdained the ...
movement in the United Kingdom during the 1950s, the Direct Cinema in North America in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the ''
Candid Eye ''Candid Eye'' is a Canadian documentary television series which aired on CBC Television in 1958. Production Wolf Koenig, Terence Macartney-Filgate, and Stanley Jackson filmed ''The Days Before Christmas'' in December 1957, and the Canadian Br ...
'' series in Canada in the 1950s all essentially owed a debt to Vertov. This revival of Vertov's legacy included rehabilitation of his reputation in the Soviet Union, with retrospectives of his films, biographical works, and writings. In 1962, the first Soviet monograph on Vertov was published, followed by another collection, "Dziga Vertov: Articles, Diaries, Projects". In 1984, to recall the 30th anniversary of Vertov's death, three New York cultural organizations put on the first American retrospective of Vertov's work.
New Media New media describes communication technologies that enable or enhance interaction between users as well as interaction between users and content. In the middle of the 1990s, the phrase "new media" became widely used as part of a sales pitch for ...
theorist
Lev Manovich Lev Manovich ( ) is an author of books on digital culture and new media, and professor of Computer Science at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Manovich's current research and teaching focuses on digital humanities, social comput ...
suggested Vertov as one of the early pioneers of database cinema genre in his essay ''Database as a symbolic form''.


Filmography

*1918 Кинонеделя (''Kino Nedelya''/''Cinema Week'') *1918 Годовщина революции (''Anniversary of the Revolution'') *1921 История гражданской войны (''History of the Civil War'') *1922 Киноправда ('' Kino-Pravda'') *1924 Советские игрушки (''Soviet Toys'') *1924 Кино-глаз (''
Kino-Eye Kino-Eye (Anglophonic: Cine-Eye) is a film technique developed in Soviet Russia by Dziga Vertov. It was also the name of the movement and group that was defined by this technique. Kino-Eye was Vertov's means of capturing what he believed to be "i ...
''), cameraman
Ilya Kopalin Ilya Petrovich Kopalin (russian: Илья́ Петро́вич Копа́лин; 1900–1976) was a Soviet film director remembered for his documentaries. His most famous footage is that of Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference and ...
*1926 Шестая часть мира ('' A Sixth Part of the World'') *1928 Одиннадцатый (''The Eleventh Year'') *1929 Человек с киноаппаратом (''
Man with a Movie Camera ''Man with a Movie Camera'' (russian: Человек с киноаппаратом, translit=Chelovek s kinoapparatom) is an experimental 1929 Soviet silent documentary film, directed by Dziga Vertov, filmed by his brother Mikhail Kaufman, an ...
'') *1931 Энтузиазм (Симфония Донбаса) (''
Enthusiasm In modern usage, enthusiasm refers to intense enjoyment, interest, or approval expressed by a person. The term is related to playfulness, inventiveness, optimism and high energy. The word was originally used to refer to a person possessed by G ...
'') *1934 Три песни о Ленине (''
Three Songs About Lenin ''Three Songs About Lenin'' (russian: Три песни о Ленине, 1934) is a documentary sound film by Ukrainian-Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertov. It is based on three admiring songs sung by anonymous people in Soviet Russia about Vladim ...
'') *1937 Памяти Серго Орджоникидзе ('' In Memory of Sergo Ordzhonikidze'') *1937 Колыбельная (''
Lullaby A lullaby (), or cradle song, is a soothing song or piece of music that is usually played for (or sung to) children (for adults see music and sleep). The purposes of lullabies vary. In some societies they are used to pass down cultural knowledg ...
'') *1938 Три героини (''Three Heroines'') *1942 Казахстан – фронту! (''Kazakhstan for the Front!'') *1944 В горах Ала-Тау (''In the Mountains of Ala-Tau'') *1954 Новости дня (''News of the Day'')


Lost films

Some early Vertov's films were lost for many years. Only 12 minutes of his 1918 ''Anniversary of the Revolution'' were known; in 2018 Russian film historian Nikolai Izvolov found lost film in the Russian State Documentary Film & Photo Archive and restored it. In 2022 he reconstructed another lost film, 1921 ''The History of the Civil War'' using archive materials.


See also

*
Soviet montage theory Soviet montage theory is an approach to understanding and creating cinema that relies heavily upon editing ('' montage'' is French for "assembly" or "editing"). It is the principal contribution of Soviet film theorists to global cinema, and bro ...
* Formalist film theory *
Cinéma Vérité Cinéma vérité (, , ; "truthful cinema") is a style of documentary filmmaking developed by Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, inspired by Dziga Vertov's theory about Kino-Pravda. It combines improvisation with use of the camera to unveil truth or ...
*
Pure Cinema Pure may refer to: Computing * A pure function * A pure virtual function * PureSystems, a family of computer systems introduced by IBM in 2012 * Pure Software, a company founded in 1991 by Reed Hastings to support the Purify tool * Pure-FTPd, ...
*
Abstract Film Abstract may refer to: * ''Abstract'' (album), 1962 album by Joe Harriott * Abstract of title a summary of the documents affecting title to parcel of land * Abstract (law), a summary of a legal document * Abstract (summary), in academic publishin ...


Footnotes


References

;Books and Articles * Barnouw, Erik. ''Documentary: a History of the Non-fiction Film.'' Oxford University Press. Original copyright 1974. *Bohlman, Philip Vilas. ''Music, Modernity, and the Foreign in the New Germany.'' 1994, pp. 121–152 * Christie, Ian. "Rushes: Pordenone Retrospective: Gazing into the Future.", in: ''Sight and Sound''. 2005, 15, 1, 4–5, British Film Institute *Cook, Simon.
Our Eyes, Spinning Like Propellers: Wheel of Life, Curve of Velocities, and Dziga Vertov's Theory of the Interva
l." ''October'', 2007: 79–91. *Ellis, Jack C. ''The Documentary Idea: a Critical History of English-Language Documentary Film and Video.'' Prentice Hall, 1989. *Feldman, Seth. "'Peace between Man and Machine': Dziga Vertov's ''The Man with a Movie Camera.''" in:
Barry Keith Grant Barry Keith Grant is a Canadian-American critic, educator, author and editor who best known for his work on science fiction films, horror films and popular music. Grant is recognized as one of the leading experts on the work of American documenta ...
, and Jeannette Sloniowski, eds. ''Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video.'' Wayne State University Press, 1998. pp. 40–53. *Feldman, Seth. ''Evolution of style in the early work of Dziga Vertov.'' 1977, Arno Press, New York. *Graffy, Julian; Deriabin, Aleksandr; Sarkisova, Oksana; Keller, Sarah; Scandiffio, Theresa . ''Lines of Resistance: Dziga Vertov and the Twenties''; edited and with an introduction by Yuri Tsivian. Le Giornate del cinema muto, Gemona, Udine *Heftberger, Adelheid. ''Kollision der Kader. Dziga Vertovs Filme, die Visualisierung ihrer Strukturen und die Digital Humanities''. Munich: edition text + kritik, 2016. *Hicks, Jeremy. ''Dziga Vertov: Defining Documentary Film.'' London & New York: I. B. Tauris, 2007. *Le Grice, Malcolm. ''Abstract Film and Beyond.'' Studio Vista, 1977. *MacKay, John. "Allegory and Accommodation: Vertov's «Three Songs of Lenin» (1934) as a Stalinist Film." In ''Film History: An International Journal''; 18.4 (2006) 376–391. *MacKay, John
"Disorganized Noise: ''Enthusiasm'' and the Ear of the Collective."
*MacKay, John. "Film Energy: Process and Metanarrative in Dziga Vertov's «The Eleventh Year» (1928)." ''October''; 121 (Summer 2007): 41–78. *MacKay, John

*MacKay, John
John MacKay , Yale University – Academia.edu
Drafts of ''Dziga Vertov: Life and Work] *Michelson, Annette & Turvey, Malcolm, eds. "New Vertov Studies." Special Issue of ''October'', (''October'' 121 (Summer 2007)). *Roberts, Graham. ''The Man with the Movie Camera.'' I. B. Tauris, 2001. *Singer, Ben. "Connoisseurs of Chaos: Whitman, Vertov and the 'Poetic Survey,'" ''Literature/Film Quarterly''; 15:4 (Fall 1987): 247–258. *Tode, Thomas & Wurm, Barbara, Austrian Film Museum, eds. ''Dziga Vertov. The Vertov Collection at the Austrian Film Museum,'' Bilingual (German-English). (Paperback – May 2006), FilmmuseumSynemaPublikationen.-
online version available here
*Tsivian, Yuri, ed. ''Lines of Resistance: Dziga Vertov and the Twenties''. Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, 2004. *Vertov, Dziga. ''On Kinopravda.'' 1924, and ''The Man with the Movie Camera.'' 1928, in: Annette Michelson ed. Kevin O'Brien tr. ''Kino-Eye : The Writings of Dziga Vertov,'' University of California Press, 1995. *Dziga Vertov. ''We. A Version of a Manifesto.'' 1922, in Ian Christie, Richard Taylor eds. ''The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents, 1896–1939'' Routledge, 1994. *Warren, Charles, ed. ''Beyond Document: Essays on Nonfiction Film.'' Wesleyan University Press, 1996. ;DVDs *''Dziga Vertov's Man with the Movie Camera'' DVD, audio commentary track by Yuri Tsivian. *''Entuziazm (Simfonija Donbassa)'' DVD, restored version and unrestored version plus documentary on Peter Kubelka's restoration.


External links

*

at UBUWEB
Newsreels by Vertov on europeanfilmgateway.eu
*, by John MacKay, Yale University *
Central Studio for Documentary Film (ЦСДФ) museum biography page (in Russian)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vertov, Dziga 1896 births 1954 deaths People from Białystok Articles containing video clips Recipients of the Order of the Red Star Film theorists Jews from the Russian Empire Russian experimental filmmakers Soviet cinematographers Soviet documentary film directors Soviet film directors Soviet film editors Deaths from cancer in the Soviet Union Burials at Novodevichy Cemetery