Films › Documentary
Man with a Movie Camera
Directed by Dziga Vertov, 1929
Vertov catalogues nearly every technique available in 1929, including split screen, freeze frame, stop motion, Dutch angles and extreme slow motion. The film shows its own editor at the bench, making the construction of the documentary part of the subject. There is no narration and no intertitles, so the argument is carried purely by juxtaposition. Elizaveta Svilova's editing is the actual authorship on display. Cameraman Mikhail Kaufman shot with a portable camera in genuinely dangerous positions, including moving trains and factory floors, to gather material Svilova could later juxtapose for rhythm rather than chronology. The film's insistence on visible apparatus, tripods, splicing tables, projection booths, anticipates decades of self-reflexive documentary practice. Editors should study the cutting patterns closely, since the montage logic here predates and arguably exceeds much of what Soviet montage theory later codified in writing.
What to watch for
Watch the editing room sequences and note that the film keeps admitting it is a made object.
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