Man with a Movie Camera(1929)
dir. Dziga Vertov
A film about how films are made, in 1929.
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A day in Soviet cities, from dawn to a night at the cinema, with no actors, no story and no title cards. A cameraman climbs towers and rides trams while the film shows its own making: the editor at her table, the audience in their seats, a camera that is also a character. Vertov, the director, called it a film language of its own. It is regularly named among the greatest films ever made.
Why it’s here
It's a film about how a film is made, shown as it is made. What's punk is the refusal of story and the joy of cutting reality into a new order. What's pedagogical is that it hands a young viewer the whole grammar of editing, framing and montage without a word of explanation, a perfect fit for the Reel Workshop and DoCR's filmmaking-first launch. Note: silent, 68 minutes, and state-backed, since it celebrates the Soviet project in the late 1920s. Vertov's editor was his wife, Elizaveta Svilova, who appears on screen. Companion to Film Form / Film Sense and In the Blink of an Eye in the catalog.
Where This Film Lives