Director: Dziga Vertov / Cast: Mikhail Kaufman, Elizaveta Svilova / USSR / Release Date: 1929 / Length: 68’ Musicians: Stephen Horne – piano, Frank Bockius – drum
Finding camera extremely imposing with its ability to observe and record the world as it is, Dziga Vertov takes a walk around a metropolis with his brother Mikhail Kaufman in the streets, mines, factories, workshops and cinemas. He films daily life scenes reminiscent of a typical Soviet day. The garbage man, the homeless, the miner, the bourgeois, the laborer... All of them step into his frames one by one. And film editor Elizaveta Svilova focuses on particular themes in the montage: The city sleeping, waking up, working hard. The proletariat sustaining the whole city.
Vertov states this film as a “visual manifesto”; cinema must convey production to the screen, and proletariat, daily life and collectivity must be its subject matters. Restored by EYE Film Institute Netherlands, Man With A Movie Camera is a marvelous classic, a must see provided with a rare opportunity on the big screen.