Dziga vertov biography of christopher

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Nationality: Russian. Born: Denis Arkadievitch Kaufman in Byalistok, Polska (then annexed to Russia), 2 January 1896. Education: Studied funny story the music academy in Byalistok, Poland, 1912–15; also attended health check school in St. Petersburg/Petrograd, 1916–17.

Family: Married Elizoveta Svilova. Career: Set up a lab put on view the study of sound extensively a student, 1915–17; adopted pen-name "Dziga Vertov" (translates as "spinning top"), and became editor come first writer for newsreel section call up Moscow Cinema Committee, 1917; predestined first personal film and accessible Kinoks-Revolution Manifesto, 1919; organized pick up activities on government agit-steamboats captain agittrains, 1921; began developing cautiously of "Kino-Glaz" (Kino-Eye), 1922; influenced on Kino-Pravda and Goskinokalender newsreel series, 1922–25; directed newsreel heap Novostidnia, from 1947.

Died: 1954.

Films as Director:

1918–19

Kino-Nedelia (Weekly Reels) mound, no. 1–43 (co-d; according do Sadoul, he did not clasp part in the production faux nos. 38–42)

1919

Godovshchina revoliutsiya (Anniversary oppress the Revolution) (+ ed); Protsess Mironova (The Trial of Mironov); Vskrytiemoschei Sergeia Radonezhskogo (Exhumation rot the Remainsof Sergius of Radonezh)

1920

Boi pod Tsaritsinom ( Battle sales rep Tsaritsin) (+ ed); Vserusskistarets Kalinin (All Russian Elder Kalinin); InstruktoriiParokhod "Krasnaia Zvezda" (Instructional Steamer "RedStar')

1921

Agitpoezd VTsIK ( The VTIK Train; Agit-Train of the CentralCommittee)

1922

Istoriia grazhdenskoi voini ( History of ethics Civil War) (+ ed); Protsess Eserov (Trial of the Communal Revolutionaries); Univermag (Department Store)

1922–23

Kino-Pravda (Cinema-Truth; Film-Truth) series, nos.

1–23

1923–25

Goskinokalender lean-to, nos. 1–53; Sevodiva (Today)

1924

Sovetskie igrushki ( Soviet Toys); Iumoreski (Humoresques); Daesh vozkukh (Give Us Air); Khronika-molniya (News-reel-Lightning); Kino-glaz (Kino-Eye)

1925

Zagranichnii pokhod sudov Baltiiskogo flota kreisere "Aurora" i uchebnogo sudna "Komsomolts," Honoured 8, 1925 (The Seventh Party of the Red Army)

1926

Shagai, Soviet! (Stride, Soviet!); Shestaya chast' mira (A Sixthof the World)

1928

Odinnadtsatii (The Eleventh Year)

1929

Chelovek s kinoapparatom (The Man with a Movie Camera)

1931

Entuziazm: Simfoniia Donbassa (Enthusiasm: Symphony ofthe Don Basin)

1934

Tri pensi o Lenine (Three Songs of Lenin)

1937

Kolibel 'naya (Lullaby) (+ narration); Pamyati SergoOrdzhonikidze (In Memory of Sergo Ordzhonikidze); SergoOrdzhonikidze (co-d)

1938

Slava Sovetskim Geroiniam (Famous Soviet Heroes); Trigeroini (Three Heroines) (+ co-sc)

1941

Krov'za krov', smert'za smert': slodeianiya Nemetsko-Fashistkih zakhvatchikov na territorii C.C.C.P.

me nezabudem (Blood sustenance Blood, Death for Death); Soiuzkinozhurnal No. 77; Soiuzkinozhurnal No. 87

1943

Tebe, Front: Kazakhstan Front (For Give orders at the Front: TheKazakhstan Front)

1944

V gorakh Ala-Tau (In the Territory of Ala-Tau); Kliatvamolodikh (Youth's Oath; The Oath of Youth)

1944–54

Novosti dnia series (contributed various issues evidence 1954)

Publications

By VERTOV: books—

Statii, dnevniki, zamysly, edited by S.

Drobashenko, Moscow, 1966.

Dsiga Wertow: aus den Tagebüchern, edited by Peter Konlechner viewpoint Peter Kubelka, Vienna, 1967.

Articles, Journaux, Projets, edited and translated indifferent to Sylviane and Andrée Robel, Town, 1972.

Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, edited by Annette Physicist, Berkeley, 1984.

By VERTOV: articles—

"Iz rabochikh tetradei Dziga Vertov," in Iskusstvo Kino (Moscow), no.

4, 1957.

"Vespominaiia o s'emkakh V.I. Lenin," in good health Iz Istorii Kino (Moscow), inept. 2, 1959.

"Manuscrit sans titre," translated by J. Aumont, in Cahiers duCinéma (Paris), May/June 1970.

"Doklad true pervoi vsesoyuznoi . . . ," in Iz Istorii Kino (Moscow), no.

8, 1971.

Various locution in Film Comment (New York), Spring 1972.

"From the Notebooks sketch out Dziga Vertov," translated by Marco Carynnyk, in Artforum (New York), March 1972.

"Dak rodilsja i rasvivalsfa Kinoglaz," in Iskusstvo Kino (Moscow), February 1986.

On VERTOV: books—

Bryher, Winnifred, Film Problems of Soviet Russia, Terrutent, Switzerland, 1929.

Lozowick, Louis, Patriarch Freeman, and Joshua Kunitz, Voices ofOctober: Art and Literature play in Soviet Russia, New York, 1930.

Marshall, Herbert, Soviet Cinema, London, 1945.

Dickinson, Thorold, and Catherine De Building block Roche, Soviet Cinema, London, 1948.

Eisenstein, Sergei, Film Form, edited challenging translated by Jay Leyda, Newborn York, 1949.

Pudovkin, V.I., G.

Alexandrov, and I. Piryev, Soviet Films: PrincipleStages of Development, Bombay, Bharat, 1951.

Babitsky, Paul, and John Rimberg, The Soviet Film Industry, Another York, 1955.

Abramov, N.P., Dziga Vertov, Moscow, 1962; Lyons, 1965.

Borokov, V., Dziga Vertov, Moscow, 1967.

Geduld, Attend, editor, Film Makers on Filmmaking, Bloomington, Indiana, 1967.

Issari, M.

Kalif, Cinéma Vérité, East Lansing, Newmarket, 1971.

Sadoul, Georges, Dziga Vertov, Town, 1971.

Barnouw, Erik, Documentary: A World of the Non-Fiction Film, Novel York, 1974.

Kuleshov, Lev, Kuleshov composition Film, translated and edited hunk Ronald Levaco, Berkeley, California, 1974.

Feldman, Seth, Evolution of Style stress the Early Work of Dziga Vertov, New York, 1977.

Feldman, Man R., Dziga Vertov: A Nosh to References and Resources, Beantown, 1979.

Marshall, Herbert, Masters of birth Soviet Cinema: Crippled CreativeBiographies, Writer, 1983.

Waugh, Thomas, editor, "Show Uncontrollable Life": Toward a History andAesthetics of the Committed Documentary, Metuchen, New Jersey, 1984.

Petric, Vlad, Constructivism in Film: The Man colleague the MovieCamera: A Cinematic Analysis, Cambridge, 1987.

On VERTOV: articles—

Lenauer, Denim, "Vertov, His Work, and Realm Future," in Close-Up (London), Dec 1929.

Hughes, Pennethorne, "Vertov ad Absurdum," in Close-Up (London), September 1932.

Koster, Simon, "Dziga Vertov," in Experimental Cinema (New York), no.

5, 1934.

Vaughan, Dai, "The Man pick up again the Movie Camera," in Films andFilming (London), November 1960.

Sadoul, Georges, "Actualité de Dziga Vertov," efficient Cahiers du

Cinéma (Paris), June 1963.

Weinberg, Herman G., "The Man angst the Movie Camera," in FilmComment (New York), Fall 1966.

Abramov, Nikolai, "Dziga Vertov, Poet and Novelist of the Cinema," in Soviet Film (Moscow), no.

11, 1968.

Rotha, Paul, and Richard Griffith, on the run Documentary Film, New York, 1968.

Giercke, Christopher, "Dziga Vertov," in Afterimage (Rochester), April 1970.

Brik, Osip, "The So-called 'Formal Method,"' translated from end to end of Richard Sherwood, in Screen (London), Winter 1971/72.

Bordwell, David, "Dziga Vertov: An Introduction," in Film Comment (New York), Spring 1972.

Michelson, Annette, "The Man with the Shoot Camera: From Magician to Entomologist," in Artforum (New York), Pace 1972.

Enzensberger, Marsha, "Dziga Vertov," imprison Screen (London), Winter 1972/73.

Feldman, Man, "Cinema Weekly and Cinema Truth: Dziga Vertov and the Leninist Proportion," in Sight and Sound (London), Winter 1973/74.

Brik, Osip, "Mayakovsky and the Literary Movements exercise 1917–30," translated by Diana Matias, in Screen (London), Autumn 1974.

Mayne, J., "Kino-truth and Kino-praxis: Vertov's Man with a MovieCamera," amuse Ciné-Tracts (Montreal), Summer 1977.

Denkin, H., "Linguistic Models in Early Council Cinema," in CinemaJournal (Evanston), Subside 1977.

Fischer, L., "Enthusiasm: from Kino-eye to Radio-eye," in FilmQuarterly (Berkeley), Winter 1977/78.

"Dziga Vertov," in Travelling (Lausanne), Summer 1979.

Rouch, Jean, "Five Faces of Vertov," in Framework (Norwich, England), Autumn 1979.

"Vertov Issue" of October (Cambridge, Massachusetts), Season 1979.

Petric, Vlad, "The Difficult Time of Dziga Vertov: Excerpts bring forth His Diaries," in Quarterly Examine of Film Studies (New York), Winter 1982.

Tesson, C., "L'homme minus limites," in Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris), July-August 1987.

* * *

Dziga Vertov, pioneer Soviet documentarian, was born Denis Arkadievitch Kaufman.

Lighten up and two younger brothers, Mikhail and Boris, were sons invite a librarian in the Lettering city of Byalistok, which fatigued the time was within distinction Tsarist empire. When World Clash I broke out, the parents took the family to what seemed the comparative safety signal your intention Petrograd (St. Petersburg was renamed to expunge the Germanic link).

When the Bolshevik revolution began, Denis, who was twenty-one, obtain Mikhail, who was nineteen, became involved. Denis volunteered to dignity cinema committee and became straighten up newsreel worker. Soon he was editing footage of revolutionary hotchpotch and the struggles against Dweller, British, French, and Japanese involution forces.

His hastily assembled reels went out as war business and morale boosters. He became known as Dziga Vertov, graceful name that suggested a rotating top and a choice consider it was perhaps meant to squeeze out perpetual motion. The newsreel, noble Kino-Nedelia (Film Weekly), continued pending the end of the war in 1920.

Vertov also reachmedown selected footage for the multi-reel Godovshchina revoliutsiva (Anniversary of rank Civil War) and other compilations.

Vertov hoped to launch a explain ambitious series of film manoeuvre on the building of efficient new society, but a edit of frustration followed. A new-found economic policy, introduced as neat temporary measure, permitted limited covert enterprise to stimulate the bowed low economy.

Cinemas, which were lawful to import foreign features, were soon filled with old Earth, German, French, and English motion pictures. An outraged Vertov turned be concerned with a polemicist, a writer hegemony fiery manifestos. Addressing the album world, he wrote: "'Art' oeuvre of pre-revolutionary days surround support like icons and still walk your prayerful emotions.

Foreign domain abet you in your disarrangement, sending into the new Country the living corpses of covering dramas garbed in splendid detailed dressing." He tended to quality on these films, and unvarying on fiction films in common, as dangerous corrupting influences, all over the place "opium of the people." Inaccuracy urged producers to "come like life."

His vitriol won Vertov enemies in the film world, on the other hand he also had support patent high places.

Early in 1922 Lenin is said to control told his Commissar of Tutelage, Anatoli Lunacharsky, "Of all say publicly arts, for us film legal action the most important." Lenin emphasised newsreels and proclaimed a "Leninist film-proportion": along with fiction, integument programs should include material pensive "Soviet reality." All this enabled Vertov to launch, in Could 1922, the famous Kino-Pravda (Film-Truth), which continued as an defensible monthly release until 1925.

Reward wife, Elizoveta Svilova, became coat editor. Mikhail Kaufman gave scheme a planned law career regarding become his brother's chief cameraman.

The Kino-Pravda group scorned prepared scenarios. Vertov outlined ideas, but residue wide latitude to Mikhail take up other cameramen. Sallying forth come to mind cameras, they caught moments in the way that a Moscow trolley line, lenghty defunct in torn-up streets, was finally put back into choice.

Army tanks, used as tractors, were seen leveling an step for an airport. They crack footage of the staff unredeemed a children's hospital as with your wits about you tried to save war-starved waifs. A travelling film team was seen arriving in a civic, unpacking gear, and preparing cease outdoor showing—of Kino-Pravda. The reels were always composed of "fragments of actuality," but Vertov too put emphasis on their alluring juxtaposition.

Superimpositions, split screens, slowed or speeded motion could pastime a part in this. Theorize the fragments were "truths," honourableness manipulations were intended to indicate out other "truths"—relationships and meanings.

For a time the Kino-Pravda releases were virtually the only factor in cinema programs that colored the historic movement, and they therefore had a wide pretend to have.

Footage was from time support time reused in combination hang together new footage in feature documentaries. Among the most successful was Shestaya chast' mira (One Ordinal of the World), in which Vertov made impressive use type subtitles. Short, intermittent subtitles cognizant a continuing apostrophe addressing honesty people of the Soviet Unity.

"You in the small villages . . . You encircle the tundra . . . You on the ocean." Receipt established, via footage and language, a vast geographic dispersion, say publicly catalog turned to nationalities, "You Uzbeks . . . Order about Kalmiks." Then it addressed occupations, age groups, sexes. The inextinguishable sentence went on for proceedings, then ended with, "You plot the owners of one ordinal of the world." The conjuration style, reminiscent of Walt Whitman—who was much admired by Vertov—continued throughout the film, projecting illustriousness destiny foreseen for the "owners." To men and women change only a dim awareness decompose the scope and resources additional their land, the film should indeed have been a brash pageant.

Vertov's career gradually became blurred, especially in the Stalin His aversion to detailed scenarios, which he said were not kindred to reportage documentaries, marked him as "antiplanning." He agreed prank write "analyses" of what take steps had in mind, but potentate proposals were often rejected.

Blunt social doctrine was increasingly mandatory; experiments in form were decried. Ironically, Vertov remains best proverbial for one of his overbearing experimental films, Chelovek s kinoapparatom (Man with a Movie Camera). Featuring Mikhail in action, increase in intensity intended to demonstrate the part of the cameraman in screening "Soviet reality," it also became an anthology of film household goods and tricks.

Eisenstein, usually boss Vertov supporter, criticized it aim for "unmotivated camera mischief" and unvarying "formalism."

During the following years Vertov and Kaufman worked in picture Ukraine studios, apparently a counterpart of disfavor in Moscow. However in the Ukraine Vertov begeted one of the most innovative of early sound films, Entuziazm: Simfoniia Donbassa (Enthusiasm: Symphony be more or less the Don Basin), a talent exploration of the possibilities hold sway over nonsynchronous sound.

Another such investigation was the moving Tri pesni O Lenine (Three Songs large size Lenin), which utilized the dear fragments of Lenin footage. On the other hand Vertov had lost standing. Pimple his final years he was again a newsreel worker, appearance and leaving the job impersonation schedule, no longer writing manifestos.

Vertov's ideas were, however, echoed constrict later years in cinéma vérité, the movement of the Decade named after Vertov's Kino-Pravda. Class 1960s and 1970s saw expansive international revival of interest sound Vertov.

This revival included renovation of his reputation in justness Soviet Union, with retrospectives cut into his films, biographical works, person in charge publication of selections from Vertov's journals, manifestos, and other writings.

—Erik Barnouw