Dziga Vertov
Dziga Vertov | |
---|---|
RSFSR, Soviet Union (now Russia) | |
Nationality | Soviet |
Occupation(s) | Film director, cinema theorist |
Years active | 1917–1954 |
Notable work | Kino-Eye (1924) A Sixth Part of the World (1926) Man with a Movie Camera (1929) Enthusiasm (1931) |
Spouse |
Elizaveta Svilova (m. 1923) |
Family | Boris Kaufman (brother) Mikhail Kaufman (brother) |
Dziga Vertov (
In the 2012
Vertov's younger brothers Boris Kaufman and Mikhail Kaufman were also noted filmmakers, as was his wife, Yelizaveta Svilova.[3]
Biography
Early years
Vertov was born David Abelevich Kaufman into a
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Most of Vertov's early work was unpublished, and few manuscripts survived after the Second World War, though some material surfaced in later films and documentaries created by Vertov and his brothers, Boris Kaufman and Mikhail Kaufman.
Vertov is known for quotes on perception, and its ineffability, in relation to the nature of qualia (sensory experiences).[6]
After the October Revolution
After the
Vertov worked on the Kino-Nedelya series for three years, helping establish and run a film-car on
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).[7] in 1921 he compiled History of the Civil War. 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 Mikhail Kaufman.[8] Vertov's interest in machinery led to a curiosity about the mechanical basis of cinema.
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."[9]
Kino-Pravda
In 1922, the year that Nanook of the North was released, Vertov started the Kino-Pravda series.[10] The series took its title from the official government newspaper Pravda. "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.[11]
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
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".[citation needed] 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".[12] In Vertov's view, "art's tower of Babel" was the subservience of cinematic technique to narrative—what film theorist Noël Burch terms the institutional mode of representation—which would come to dominate the classical Hollywood cinema.
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
Man with a Movie Camera
With Lenin's admission of limited private enterprise through the
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".[15] 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. 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
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 [...]"[17] 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."[18]
Like other Russian filmmakers, he attempted to connect his ideas and techniques to the advancement of the aims of the Soviet Union. Whereas Sergei Eisenstein 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".[19]
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"[20] and to "bring men closer to machines".[20]
In May 1927 Vertov moved to Ukraine, and the Cine-Eye movement broke up.[7]
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. While many Soviet critics did not receive the film positively, critics abroad lauded its sonic experimentation. [21]
Three years later, Three Songs About Lenin (1934) looked at the revolution through the eyes of the Russian peasantry. For his film, Vertov had been hired by Mezhrabpomfilm. 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 in August 1934.[22] 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. 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.[citation needed] 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 Moscow in 1954.
Family
Vertov's brother
In 1923, Vertov married his long-time collaborator
Influence and legacy
Vertov's legacy still lives on today. His ideas are echoed in cinéma vérité, the movement of the 1960s named after Vertov's Kino-Pravda. The 1960s and 1970s saw an international revival of interest in Vertov.[24]
The independent, exploratory style of Vertov influenced and inspired many filmmakers and directors like the Situationist Guy Debord and independent companies such as Vertov Industries in Hawaii. The Dziga Vertov Group borrowed his name. In 1960, Jean Rouch used Vertov's filming theory when making Chronicle of a Summer. His partner Edgar Morin coined the term cinéma vérité when describing the style, using direct translation of Vertov's KinoPravda.
The
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.[26]
Vertov's work has inspired notable artist and filmmaker William Kentridge.[27]
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), cameraman Ilya Kopalin
- 1926 Шестая часть мира (A Sixth Part of the World)
- 1928 Одиннадцатый (The Eleventh Year)
- 1929 Человек с киноаппаратом (Man with a Movie Camera)
- 1931 Энтузиазм (Симфония Донбаса) (Enthusiasm)
- 1934 Три песни о Ленине (Three Songs About Lenin)
- 1937 Памяти Серго Орджоникидзе (In Memory 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)
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.[28] In 2022 he reconstructed another lost film, 1921 The History of the Civil War using archive materials.[29]
See also
- Soviet montage theory
- Formalist film theory
- Cinéma Vérité
- Pure Cinema
- Abstract Film
Footnotes
- ISBN 978-0-8108-6072-8.
- ^ "Sight & Sound Revises Best-Films-Ever Lists". studiodaily. 1 August 2012. Retrieved 1 August 2012.
- ^ McClane, Betsy A. (2013). A New History of Documentary Film (2nd ed.). New York: Bloomsbury. pp. 42, 47.
- ^ Early Soviet Cinema; Innovation, Ideology and Propaganda by David Gillespie Wallflower Press London 2005, page 57
- ^ Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction: A Very Short Introduction by Patricia Aufderheide; Oxford University Press, 28 November 2007, page 37
- ^ "Dziga Vertov". Retrieved 2 January 2018.
- ^ OCLC 178389068.
- ^ Paul Rotha (1930). The film till now, a survey of the cinema. Jonathan Cape. pp. 167–170.
- ^ "We: Variant of a manifesto" (PDF). monoskop.org. Archived (PDF) from the original on 23 April 2014. Retrieved 15 December 2018.
- ISBN 978-1-4411-2457-9.
- ISBN 978-0-691-00346-7.
- ^ Vertov 1924, p. 47
- ^ Vertov 1924, p. 42
- ^ Vertov 1924, p. 46
- ^ Vertov 1928, p. 83
- ^ At 16:04 on the commentary track.
- ^ Vertov 1922, p. 69
- )
- ^ Vertov 1922, pp. 69–71
- ^ a b Vertov 1922, p. 71
- ^ Kendall, Matthew. Boisterous Utopia: Soviet Sonic Culture and Dziga Vertov’s. The Russian Review: An American Quarterly Devoted to Russia Past and Present. Vol. 81, 2022.
- ISBN 9781618111425.
- ^ Penfold, Christopher. "Elizaveta Svilova and Soviet Documentary Film" (PDF). eprints.soton.ac.uk. University of Southampton Institutional Research Repository. Archived (PDF) from the original on 28 August 2019.
- ^ Barnouw, Erik. "Dziga Vertov – Director – Films as Director:, Publications". www.filmreference.com.
- ISBN 9780240804200.
- ISBN 9780399516047.
American retrospective of Vertov'.
- ^ Amadour (7 December 2022). "15 Minutes With Visionary Artist William Kentridge". LAmag - Culture, Food, Fashion, News & Los Angeles. Retrieved 31 December 2023.
- ^ www.oberon.nl, Oberon Amsterdam. "Anniversary of the Revolution (1918) - Dziga Vertov | IDFA" – via www.idfa.nl.
- ^ www.oberon.nl, Oberon Amsterdam. "The History of the Civil War (1921) - Dziga Vertov | IDFA" – via www.idfa.nl.
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.
- JSTOR 24058286.
- Natascha Drubek-Meyer; Murasov, Jurij, Rhapsodie und Apparatur. Zu den Filmen des Dziga Vertov. Frankfurt a.M. 1999.
- 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, 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. "The 'Spinning Top' Takes Another Turn: Vertov Today."
- 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)).
- Lech, Dorota. Dziga Vertov's Long-Lost Films, mubi.com, 8 February 2022.
- Molcard, Eva. 2020. "Elizaveta Svilova." In Jane Gaines, Radha Vatsal, and Monica Dall'Asta, eds. Women Film Pioneers Project. New York, NY: Columbia University Libraries. <https://doi.org/10.7916/d8-y8we-0736>
- Roberts, Graham. The Man with the Movie Camera. I. B. Tauris, 2001. ISBN 1-86064-394-9
- 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. ISBN 88-86155-15-8
- 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. ISBN 0-415-05298-X
- 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
- Dziga Vertov at IMDb
- Senses Of Cinema: Dziga Vertov
- Dziga Vertov's Kino-Eye and Three Songs About Lenin at UBUWEB
- Newsreels by Vertov on europeanfilmgateway.eu
- A biography of Vertov at the Wayback Machine (archived 18 June 2010), by John MacKay, Yale University
- Kino Eye (1924), scored by Robert Israel in 1999 on YouTube
- Central Studio for Documentary Film (ЦСДФ) museum biography page (in Russian)