Cinema
Man with a Movie Camera
Людина з кіноапаратом
Dziga Vertov · 1929
Synopsis
With no plot and no actors, the film follows a cameraman through a large Soviet city, from waking to night: the streets coming to life, the factories, the trams, work and leisure. The city is made of several cities joined together in the editing, and the cameraman himself is filmed filming, while slow motion, fast motion and superimposition reveal what the eye alone does not see.
Context
Born of an idea by the cameraman Mikhail Kaufman, the film was rejected in Moscow and accepted by the Ukrainian film administration; shot in 1928, mostly in Odessa but also in Kiev, Kharkiv and Moscow, it was edited by Yelizaveta Svilova. Presented in Kiev in January 1929, it bewildered audiences and quickly disappeared from the screens, but was shown with success abroad; the filmmakers of the New Wave rediscovered it in the sixties.
Who it is for
A silent film of a little over an hour, with no intertitles and no story, made of images of urban life edited according to rhythms.
Prizes and reception
Voted best documentary of all time in 2014 by the magazine Sight and Sound, ninth best film of all time in 2022, third among the hundred best Ukrainian films.
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