The Man with the Movie Camera (1929)
(Man with a Movie Camera/Chelovek s kino-apparatom)
Country: USSR
Technical: bw 68m silent
Director: Dziga Vertov
Cast: doc.
Synopsis:
The film-maker shoots city dwellers going about their daily work and play, and records himself doing it, then shows his film to a Workers' Film Theatre audience.
Review:
The most famous trope of this seminal work is that of the camera-eye, with the cameraman reflected in it, but equally astonishing is the succession of precarious poses the film-maker takes to capture life in action (film as spectacle, even here, using the documentary form to thrill). Vertov throws various experimental practices into the mix, including over and under-cranking, split screen, animation, stroboscopic editing effects and freeze-frame, and the application of a Nyman score to the film around the turn of the century compounded the impression one has of a Koyaanisqatsi years before the fact.
(Man with a Movie Camera/Chelovek s kino-apparatom)
Country: USSR
Technical: bw 68m silent
Director: Dziga Vertov
Cast: doc.
Synopsis:
The film-maker shoots city dwellers going about their daily work and play, and records himself doing it, then shows his film to a Workers' Film Theatre audience.
Review:
The most famous trope of this seminal work is that of the camera-eye, with the cameraman reflected in it, but equally astonishing is the succession of precarious poses the film-maker takes to capture life in action (film as spectacle, even here, using the documentary form to thrill). Vertov throws various experimental practices into the mix, including over and under-cranking, split screen, animation, stroboscopic editing effects and freeze-frame, and the application of a Nyman score to the film around the turn of the century compounded the impression one has of a Koyaanisqatsi years before the fact.
(Man with a Movie Camera/Chelovek s kino-apparatom)
Country: USSR
Technical: bw 68m silent
Director: Dziga Vertov
Cast: doc.
Synopsis:
The film-maker shoots city dwellers going about their daily work and play, and records himself doing it, then shows his film to a Workers' Film Theatre audience.
Review:
The most famous trope of this seminal work is that of the camera-eye, with the cameraman reflected in it, but equally astonishing is the succession of precarious poses the film-maker takes to capture life in action (film as spectacle, even here, using the documentary form to thrill). Vertov throws various experimental practices into the mix, including over and under-cranking, split screen, animation, stroboscopic editing effects and freeze-frame, and the application of a Nyman score to the film around the turn of the century compounded the impression one has of a Koyaanisqatsi years before the fact.