Dziga Vertov

Dziga (Dzyga) Vertov (Russian: Дзига Вертов, Ukrainian: Дзиґа Вертов) January 2, 1896–February 12, 1954) was a Russian pioneer documentary film and newsreel director. Russian ( transliteration:,) is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages Ukrainian (in Ukrainian украї́нська мо́ва ukrayins'ka mova,) is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. Events 366 - The Alamanni cross the frozen Rhine River in large numbers invading the Roman Empire. Year 1896 ( MDCCCXCVI) was a Leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian Calendar (or a Leap year Events 1429 - English Forces under Sir John Fastolf defend a supply convoy carrying rations to the army besieging Orleans from attack by the Year 1954 ( MCMLIV) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1954 Gregorian calendar) Russia (Россия Rossiya) or the Russian Federation ( Rossiyskaya Federatsiya) is a transcontinental Country extending Documentary film is a broad category of visual expression that is based on the attempt in one fashion or another to " Document " reality A newsreel is a Documentary film that is regularly released in a public presentation place containing filmed News stories His brothers Boris Kaufman and Mikhail Kaufman were also notable filmmakers. Boris Abelevich Kaufman, ASC (Борис Абелевич Кауфман January 12, 1903 – June 24, 1980) was an Oscar -winning Mikhail Abramovich Kaufman (1897-1979 Михаил Абрамович Кауфман was a Russian Cinematographer and Photographer.

Early years

Born Denis Abelevich Kaufman (Russian: Давид Абелевич Кауфман) into a family of Jewish intellectuals in Białystok, Congress Poland, then a part of the Russian Empire, he Russified his Jewish patronymic to Arkadievich in his youth. Russian ( transliteration:,) is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages PLEASE TAKE NOTE************ Białystok Lublin Voivodeship Białystok (also known by alternative names) is the largest City in northeastern Poland. Congress Poland Kongresówka, officially and formally Kingdom of Poland (Królestwo Polskie {{IPA-pl|'|p|o|l|s|kʲ|e}} Царство Польское Tsarstvo Polskoye The Russian Empire ( Pre-reform Russian: Pоссійская Имперія Modern Russian: Российская Империя translit: Rossiyskaya Russification (in Russian: русификация rusifikátsiya)is an adoption of the Russian language or some other Russian attribute (whether voluntarily A patronym, is a component of a Personal name based on the name of one's father Kaufman studied music at Białystok Conservatory until his family fled from the invading German army to Moscow in 1915. The German Army (Deutsches Heer heɐ) is the land component of the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany. Moscow (Москва́ romanised: Moskvá, IPA: see also other names) is the Capital and the largest city of Year 1915 ( MCMXV) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common year The Kaufmans soon settled in Saint Petersburg, where Denis Kaufman began writing poetry, science fiction and satire. Saint Petersburg ( tr: Sankt-Peterburg,) is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River Satire is often strictly defined as a literary genre or form; although in practice it is also found in the graphic and Performing arts In satire human In 1916-1917 Kaufman was studying medicine at the Psychoneurological Institute in Saint Petersburg and experimenting with "sound collages" in his free time. Year 1916 ( MCMXVI) was a Leap year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Leap year Year 1917 ( MCMXVII) was a Common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common year Kaufman adopted the name "Dziga Vertov", which means "spinning top";^[1] Vertov's political writings and his work on the Kino-Pravda newsreel series show a revolutionary romanticism. Kino-Pravda ("Film Truth" was a Newsreel series by Dziga Vertov, Elizaveta Svilova, and Mikhail Kaufman.

Career after the October Revolution

After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, at the age of 22, Vertov began editing for Kino-Nedelya (Кино-Неделя, the Moscow Cinema Committee's weekly film series, and the first newsreel series in Russia). The October Revolution (Октябрьская революция Oktyabrskaya revolyutsiya) also known as the Soviet Revolution While working for Kino-Nedelya he met Elizaveta Svilova, who at the time was employed in film preservation; she was later to become his wife. The first issue of the series came out in June 1918. Year 1918 ( MCMXVIII) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common

Dziga Vertov (director) with brother Mikhail Kaufman (cameraman)

Vertov worked on the series for three years, helping establish and run a film-car on Mikhail Kalinin's agit-train during the ongoing Russian Civil War between Communists and counterrevolutionaries. Mikhail Abramovich Kaufman (1897-1979 Михаил Абрамович Кауфман was a Russian Cinematographer and Photographer. Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin (Михаи́л Ива́нович Кали́нин ( – June 3, 1946) was a Bolshevik revolutionary and the titular Head The Russian Civil War (1917–1923 was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed Communism is a Socioeconomic structure that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless Society based A counter-revolutionary is anyone who opposes a Revolution, particularly those who act after a revolution to try to overturn or reverse it in full or in part Some of the cars on the agit-trains were equipped with actors for live performances or printing presses; Vertov's had equipment to shoot, develop, edit, and project film. A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a medium (such as paper or cloth thereby transferring an image 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. Agitprop (агитпроп is a contraction of " agit ation and prop aganda"

In 1919, Vertov compiled newsreel footage for his documentary Anniversary of the Revolution; in 1921 he compiled History of the Civil War. Year 1921 ( MCMXXI) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link will display full 1921 calendar of the Gregorian calendar The Russian Civil War (1917–1923 was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed 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 wife and editor Elizaveta Svilova, and his brother and cinematographer Mikhail Kaufman. Year 1922 ( MCMXXII) was a Common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. Mikhail Abramovich Kaufman (1897-1979 Михаил Абрамович Кауфман was a Russian Cinematographer and Photographer. Vertov's interest in machinery led to a curiosity about the mechanical basis of cinema. Vertov's brother Boris Kaufman was a noted cinematographer who worked for directors such as Elia Kazan and Sidney Lumet; his other brother, Mikhail Kaufman, worked as Vertov's cinematographer until he became a documentarian in his own right. Boris Abelevich Kaufman, ASC (Борис Абелевич Кауфман January 12, 1903 – June 24, 1980) was an Oscar -winning Elia Mother, ( Greek: Ηλίας Καζάν September 7 1909 &ndash September 28 2003) was a Greek - American Sidney Lumet (born June 25 1924) is an Academy Award -receiving American Film director, with over 50 Films to his name

Kino-Pravda

In 1922, the year that Nanook of the North was released, Vertov started the Kino-Pravda series. Nanook of the North ( 1922) is a silent Documentary film by Robert J Kino-Pravda ("Film Truth" was a Newsreel series by Dziga Vertov, Elizaveta Svilova, and Mikhail Kaufman. The series took its title from the official government newspaper Pravda. Pravda (Правда "The Truth" was a leading Newspaper of the Soviet Union and an official organ of the Central Committee of the "Kino-Pravda" (literally translated, "film truth") continued Vertov's agit-prop bent.

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. The episodes of "Kino-Pravda" usually 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 Marxist state. Marxism is the political philosophy and practice derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Propagandistic tendencies are also present, but with more subtlety, in the episode featuring the construction of an airport: one shot shows the former Tsar's tanks helping prepare a foundation, with an intertitle reading "Tanks on the labor front. Tsar csar and tzar redirect here For other uses see Tsar (disambiguation. "

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 responds to their criticisms with the assertion that the critics were hacks nipping "revolutionary effort" in the bud, and concludes the essay with his promise to "explode art's tower of Babel. The Tower of Babel (מגדל בבל Migdal Bavel برج بابل Burj Babil) is a structure featured in chapter 11 of the Book of Genesis, an enormous "^[2] In Vertov's view, "art's tower of Babel" was the subservience of cinematic technique to narrative, commonly known as the Institutional Mode of Representation. In Film theory, the Institutional Mode of Representation (IMR is the dominant mode of film construction which developed in the years after the turn of the century becoming

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, freeze frames, and other cinematic "artificialities," giving rise to criticisms not just of his trenchant dogmatism, but also of his cinematic technique. Stop motion (or frame-by-frame) animation is an Animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own 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. '"^[3] Towards the end of the same essay, Vertov mentions an upcoming project which seems likely to be Man with the Movie Camera, 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. For the TV-series see Man with a Camera. ---- Man with a Movie Camera, sometimes The Man with the Movie Camera, . . . "^[4]

Man with a Movie Camera

With Lenin's admission of limited private enterprise through his New Economic Policy, 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). For the Malaysian New Economic Policy see Malaysian New Economic Policy. 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's Battleship Potemkin in 1925. Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (Сергей Михайлович Эйзенштейн January 23, 1898 &ndash February 11, 1948) was The Uprising Origins In 1905 The Central Committee of the Social Democratic Organization of the Black Sea Fleet started preparations for a simultaneous crew Year 1925 ( MCMXXV) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. 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 in January 1927, possibly as a result of criticizing a film which effectively preaches the Communist party line. Sovkino was a studio in what now is Ukraine. It was built to compete with Disney over the market of animated movies in the 1930s Year 1927 ( MCMXXVII) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Communism is a Socioeconomic structure that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless Society based

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. "^[5] 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 the Movie Camera (filmed in Ukraine). For the TV-series see Man with a Camera. ---- Man with a Movie Camera, sometimes The Man with the Movie Camera, Some have criticized the obvious stagings in Man With the Movie Camera as being at odds with Vertov's credos "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 which 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 points out in the commentary track 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. On disc based video formats an audio commentary is an additional audio track consisting of a lecture or comments by one or more speakers that plays in real time with video "Life caught unawares" means to record life when surprised, and perhaps provoked, by the presence of a camera. (16:04 on the commentary track). 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. "

Cine-Eye

Dziga Vertov believed his concept of Cine-Eye 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[. . . ]”^[6]

Like other Russian filmmakers, he attempted to connect his ideas and techniques to the advancement of the aims of the Soviet Union. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR was a constitutionally Socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991 Whereas Sergei Eisenstein viewed his montage of attractions as a propaganda 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 being shown, 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. Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (Сергей Михайлович Эйзенштейн January 23, 1898 &ndash February 11, 1948) was ”^[7]

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 stop watch 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”^[8] and to “bring men closer to machines. ”^[8]

Late career

Vertov's cinema success continued into the 1930s. The 1930s were described as an abrupt shift to more radical and conservative lifestyles as countries were struggling to find a solution to the Great Depression. In 1931, he released Enthusiasm: Symphony of the Donbass, an examination into Soviet miners. Year 1931 ( MCMXXXI) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link will display full 1931 calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Donets Basin, also known as Donbas or Donbass (Донецький басейн usually abbreviated to Донбас translit Enthusiasm 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 looked at the revolution through the eyes of the Russian peasantry. For his film, however, Vertov had been hired by Mezhrabpomfilm, a Soviet studio that produced mainly propaganda efforts. Gorky Film Studio (in Russian, Киностудия имени Горького is a Film studio in Moscow, Russian Federation To conform to the studio's, and the Soviet government's expectations, the film was edited to include Stalin and provide a more acceptable, 'Stalinesque', ending. With the rise and official sanction of socialist realism in 1934, Vertov was forced to cut his personal artistic output significantly, eventually becoming little more than an editor for Soviet newsreels. Socialist realism is a teleologically -oriented style of realistic art which has as its purpose the furtherance of the goals of Socialism and Communism Lullaby, perhaps the last film in which Vertov was able to maintain his artistic vision, was released in 1937. Dziga Vertov died of cancer in 1954, after surviving, unscathed, Stalin's purges.

Influence

Vertov's legacy still lives on today. His independent, explorative style influenced and inspired many filmmakers and directors, including the Situationist Guy Debord and companies such as "Vertov Industries". The Situationist International ( SI) was a small group of international political and artistic Agitators with roots in Marxism, Lettrism and the Guy Ernest Debord ( December 28, 1931 - November 30, 1994) was a Marxist theorist French writer Filmmaker, hypergraphist The Dziga Vertov Group borrowed his name. The Dziga Vertov Group (Groupe Dziga Vertov was formed in 1968 by politically active filmmakers including Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin.

Quotes

• "It is far from simple to show the truth, yet the truth is simple. " [1]

• "I am the machine that reveals the world to you as only I alone am able to see it. "

Filmography

Poster for Kino-Glaz, designed by Aleksandr Rodchenko (1924)

• 1919 Кинонеделя (Kino Nedelya, Cinema Week)
• 1919 Годовщина революции (Anniversary of the Revolution)
• 1922 История гражданской войны (History of the Civil War)
• 1924 Советские игрушки (Soviet Toys)
• 1924 Кино-глаз (Kino Glaz, Cinema Eye)
• 1925 Киноправда (Kino Pravda)
• 1926 Шестая часть мира (A Sixth of the World/The Sixth Part of the World)
• 1928 Одиннадцатый (The Eleventh)
• 1929 Человек с киноаппаратом (Man with a Movie Camera)
• 1931 Энтузиазм (Enthusiasm)
• 1934 Три песни о Ленине (Three Songs about Lenin)
• 1937 Памяти Серго Орджоникидзе (Memories of Sergo Ordzhonikidze)
• 1937 Колыбельная (Lullaby)
• 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)

Notes

References

Books

• Erik Barnouw. Erik Barnouw (1908 &ndash July 19, 2001) was a US historian of radio and television broadcasting Documentary: a History of the Non-fiction Film. Oxford University Press. Original copyright 1974.
• Jack C. Ellis. The Documentary Idea: A Critical History of English-Language Documentary Film and Video. Prentice Hall, 1989.
• Seth Feldman. "'Peace between Man and Machine': Dziga Vertov's The Man with a Movie Camera. " in Barry Keith Grant, and Jeannette Sloniowski, eds. Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video. Wayne State University Press, 1998. pp. 40-53.
• Jeremy Hicks. Dziga Vertov: Defining Documentary Film. London & New York: IB Tauris, 2007.
• Malcolm Le Grice. Abstract Film and Beyond. Studio Vista, 1977.
• John MacKay. "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.
• John MacKay. "Disorganized Noise: Enthusiasm and the Ear of the Collective. " Available at [www. kinokultura. com/articles/jan05-mackay. html].
• Annette Michelson and Malcolm Turvey eds. "New Vertov Studies. " Special Issue of October, (October 121 (Summer 2007)).
• Graham Roberts. The Man with the Movie Camera. I. B. Tauris, 2001. ISBN 1860643949
• Thomas Tode, Barbara Wurm, Austrian Film Museum eds. Dziga Vertov. The Vertov Collection at the Austrian Film Museum, Bilingual (German-English). (Paperback - May 2006), FilmmuseumSynemaPublikationen, available at [www. filmmuseum. at].
• Dziga Vertov. 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. ISBN 041505298X
• Charles Warren 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.

See also

• Political Cinema

External links

• Dziga Vertov at SensesOfCinema.com
• Fragments from Dziga Vertov's Kino-Pravda watchable and downloadable with Esperanto subtitles
• Dziga Vertov's Kino-Eye watchable and downloadable with Esperanto subtitles
• Dziga Vertov's The Sixth Part Of The World watchable and downloadable with Esperanto subtitles