The in a repetitive sequence where vertov

The decade after the October Revolution gave way to one of the most important periods in Russian art. During that time Soviet artists felt free to experiment and create unique avant-garde achievements including those which conflicted with the official party line.  Modern documentary sphere wouldn’t be the same without creative and technical montage innovations of avant-garde artist and film poet Dziga Vertov. Dziga Vertov was one of those who didn’t hesitate to express himself in ways uncompromised by artistic conventions or political dictates. Film historians such as Michelson1 and Petric2 have positioned Vertov as an extremely important figure of the European modernist avant-garde. Transforming newsreel into new form of documentary film, he became the first one who created the genre of socialist realism. The irrepressible desire of Vertov to create and experiment gave us the the opportunity to see now on the screens chronicle and associative films. Before his innovations, documentary films used to be just a silent translation of reality.

Nevertheless Vertov managed to endow significance to basic cinematography. To make a link between different people and activities shown in the film, Vertov used a unique editing method that was described by his scholar Vlada Petric as “ disruptive-associable montage”: “ A sequence establishes its initial topic and develops its full potential through an appropriate editing pace until a seemingly incongruous shot (announcing a new topic) is intercut, foreshadowing another lectical commentary on the previously recorded event. The metaphorical linkage between the two disparate topics occurs through an associative process that takes place in the viewer’s mind”. As a result, Vertov in his film created a whole system of complex sequences with intercuts between different acts rather than showing activities in linear editing. Kazemir Malevich praised The Man with a Movie Camera for “ magnificently understanding the idea or the task of the new montage which expresses a shift sdvig that did not exist previously”. Famous suprematist emphasised that the film had no linear plot, and thus showed “ the collapse of the theme and even the dissolution of objects in time, at the expense of dynamic expression. For instance, “ pure force and dynamics” (Malevich’s emphasis) is notably visible in a repetitive sequence where Vertov documented life circle.

To make visual connection between death, marriage and birth, filmmaker used disruptive-associable montage technique with shot-by-shot breakdowns which included high angle, low angle, extreme close-up, close-up medium close-up. These unexpected insertions of 16 shots have thematic connotation which contradicts the already established meaning of the entire sequence. The “ life-facts” are related to each other not through narrative continuity but through an ideological juxtaposition of presented events.

(2012) He introduced metaphorical meaning to all the imagery and moreover he managed to record video and sound at the same time.  Vertov didn’t want to satisfy all the needs of audience as he claimed that techniques to manipulate the viewer can be considered as “ bourgeois” method. Cinematographer believed that the staged film was irreconcilable with the spirit of the revolutionary period. That times obligated the cinema’s aims be in direct political alignment with those of the new socialist reality. “ I am kino-eye, I am a mechanical eye.

I, a machine, show you the world as only I can see it” Vertov in his theoretical writings exalted the role of the camera in subjective reality transmission and underscored the power of independent filmmaking. Curiously, only nowadays people began to see Dziga Vertov as a seminal figure of early documentary film, alongside Robert Flaherty and John Grierson. First decades of the XX century gave birth to the outstanding avant-garde masterpieces that still act as a source of inspiration for modern artists from all over the world. Dziga Vertov