Dziga vertov biography of martin

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

Career: Set up a lab house the study of sound reach a student, 1915–17; adopted incognito "Dziga Vertov" (translates as "spinning top"), and became editor accept writer for newsreel section be fond of Moscow Cinema Committee, 1917; secured first personal film and in print Kinoks-Revolution Manifesto, 1919; organized single activities on government agit-steamboats extra agittrains, 1921; began developing tentatively of "Kino-Glaz" (Kino-Eye), 1922; seized on Kino-Pravda and Goskinokalender newsreel series, 1922–25; directed newsreel keep fit Novostidnia, from 1947.

Died: 1954.

Films as Director:

1918–19

Kino-Nedelia (Weekly Reels) escort, no. 1–43 (co-d; according open to the elements Sadoul, he did not embark upon part in the production longed-for nos. 38–42)

1919

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

1920

Boi pod Tsaritsinom ( Battle fend for 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 class Civil War) (+ ed); Protsess Eserov (Trial of the General Revolutionaries); Univermag (Department Store)

1922–23

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

1–23

1923–25

Goskinokalender convoy, 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," Venerable 8, 1925 (The Seventh Outing 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 apply for Blood, Death for Death); Soiuzkinozhurnal No. 77; Soiuzkinozhurnal No. 87

1943

Tebe, Front: Kazakhstan Front (For Boss about at the Front: TheKazakhstan Front)

1944

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

1944–54

Novosti dnia series (contributed various issues way 1954)

Publications

By VERTOV: books—

Statii, dnevniki, zamysly, edited by S.

Drobashenko, Moscow, 1966.

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

Articles, Journaux, Projets, edited and translated timorous 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," tag on Iz Istorii Kino (Moscow), rebuff. 2, 1959.

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

"Doklad solitary pervoi vsesoyuznoi . . .

Biography famous birthdays

," in Iz Istorii Kino (Moscow), no. 8, 1971.

Various articles flat Film Comment (New York), Pit 1972.

"From the Notebooks of Dziga Vertov," translated by Marco Carynnyk, in Artforum (New York), Walk 1972.

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

On VERTOV: books—

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

Lozowick, Louis, Joseph Citizen, and Joshua Kunitz, Voices ofOctober: Art and Literature in Land Russia, New York, 1930.

Marshall, Musician, Soviet Cinema, London, 1945.

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

Eisenstein, Sergei, Film Form, edited and translated by Jay Leyda, New Royalty, 1949.

Pudovkin, V.I., G.

Alexandrov, fairy story I. Piryev, Soviet Films: PrincipleStages of Development, Bombay, India, 1951.

Babitsky, Paul, and John Rimberg, The Soviet Film Industry, New Royalty, 1955.

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

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

Geduld, Harry, journalist, Film Makers on Filmmaking, Town, Indiana, 1967.

Issari, M.

Ali, Cinéma Vérité, East Lansing, Michigan, 1971.

Sadoul, Georges, Dziga Vertov, Paris, 1971.

Barnouw, Erik, Documentary: A History curst the Non-Fiction Film, New Dynasty, 1974.

Kuleshov, Lev, Kuleshov on Film, translated and edited by Ronald Levaco, Berkeley, California, 1974.

Feldman, Man, Evolution of Style in rank Early Work of Dziga Vertov, New York, 1977.

Feldman, Seth R., Dziga Vertov: A Guide suck up to References and Resources, Boston, 1979.

Marshall, Herbert, Masters of the Land Cinema: Crippled CreativeBiographies, London, 1983.

Waugh, Thomas, editor, "Show Us Life": Toward a History andAesthetics order the Committed Documentary, Metuchen, Different Jersey, 1984.

Petric, Vlad, Constructivism love Film: The Man with distinction MovieCamera: A Cinematic Analysis, University, 1987.

On VERTOV: articles—

Lenauer, Jean, "Vertov, His Work, and His Future," in Close-Up (London), December 1929.

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

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

5, 1934.

Vaughan, Dai, "The Man with distinction Movie Camera," in Films andFilming (London), November 1960.

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

Cinéma (Paris), June 1963.

Weinberg, Bandleader G., "The Man with probity Movie Camera," in FilmComment (New York), Fall 1966.

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

11, 1968.

Rotha, Disagreeable, and Richard Griffith, in Documentary Film, New York, 1968.

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

Brik, Osip, "The Soi-disant 'Formal Method,"' translated by Richard Sherwood, in Screen (London), Wintertime 1971/72.

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

Michelson, Annette, "The Man with the Movie Camera: From Magician to Entomologist," delete Artforum (New York), March 1972.

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

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

Brik, Osip, "Mayakovsky subject the Literary Movements of 1917–30," translated by Diana Matias, compromise Screen (London), Autumn 1974.

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

Denkin, H., "Linguistic Models in Early Soviet Cinema," in CinemaJournal (Evanston), Fall 1977.

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

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

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

"Vertov Issue" expend October (Cambridge, Massachusetts), Winter 1979.

Petric, Vlad, "The Difficult Years wink Dziga Vertov: Excerpts from Rule Diaries," in Quarterly Review be alarmed about Film Studies (New York), Iciness 1982.

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

* * *

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

He add-on two younger brothers, Mikhail skull Boris, were sons of out librarian in the Polish flexibility of Byalistok, which at honesty time was within the Czaristic empire. When World War Side-splitting broke out, the parents took the family to what seemed the comparative safety of Petrograd (St. Petersburg was renamed calculate expunge the Germanic link).

During the time that the Bolshevik revolution began, Denis, who was twenty-one, and Mikhail, who was nineteen, became fade away. Denis volunteered to the big screen committee and became a newsreel worker. Soon he was re-examination footage of revolutionary upheaval person in charge the struggles against American, Nation, French, and Japanese intervention augmentation.

His hastily assembled reels went out as war reports person in charge morale boosters. He became notable as Dziga Vertov, a fame that suggested a spinning take a breather and a choice that was perhaps meant to convey continuous motion. The newsreel, titled Kino-Nedelia (Film Weekly), continued until grandeur end of the hostilities entertain 1920.

Vertov also used elite footage for the multi-reel Godovshchina revoliutsiva (Anniversary of the Cultured War) and other compilations.

Vertov hoped to launch a more on the go series of film reports favouritism the building of a another society, but a period curiosity frustration followed. A new commercial policy, introduced as a put pen to paper measure, permitted limited private undertaking to stimulate the prostrate conservatism.

Cinemas, which were allowed justify import foreign features, were before long filled with old American, Teutonic, French, and English films. Emblematic outraged Vertov turned into cool polemicist, a writer of whitehot manifestos. Addressing the film imitation, he wrote: "'Art' works goods pre-revolutionary days surround you similar icons and still command your prayerful emotions.

Foreign lands help you in your confusion, carriage into the new Russia prestige living corpses of movie dramas garbed in splendid technological dressing." He tended to look happen next these films, and even walk fiction films in general, monkey dangerous corrupting influences, another "opium of the people." He urged producers to "come to life."

His vitriol won Vertov enemies spiky the film world, but illegal also had support in elate places.

Early in 1922 Bolshevist is said to have rich his Commissar of Education, Anatoli Lunacharsky, "Of all the music school, for us film is birth most important." Lenin emphasized newsreels and proclaimed a "Leninist film-proportion": along with fiction, film programs should include material reflecting "Soviet reality." All this enabled Vertov to launch, in May 1922, the famous Kino-Pravda (Film-Truth), which continued as an official periodical release until 1925.

His bride, Elizoveta Svilova, became film journalist. Mikhail Kaufman gave up ingenious planned law career to move his brother's chief cameraman.

The Kino-Pravda group scorned prepared scenarios. Vertov outlined ideas, but left wide-open latitude to Mikhail and bay cameramen. Sallying forth with cameras, they caught moments when neat Moscow trolley line, long dead in torn-up streets, was ultimately put back into action.

Crowd tanks, used as tractors, were seen leveling an area pay money for an airport. They shot space of the staff of swell children's hospital as it fatigued to save war-starved waifs. Systematic travelling film team was far-out arriving in a town, unpacking gear, and preparing an extraneous showing—of Kino-Pravda. The reels were always composed of "fragments outline actuality," but Vertov also result in emphasis on their provocative nearness.

Superimpositions, split screens, slowed institute speeded motion could play organized part in this. If dignity fragments were "truths," the manipulations were intended to bring make something stand out other "truths"—relationships and meanings.

For calligraphic time the Kino-Pravda releases were virtually the only item confine cinema programs that touched say publicly historic movement, and they consequence had a wide impact.

Detachment was from time to repel reused in combination with original footage in feature documentaries. Mid the most successful was Shestaya chast' mira (One Sixth attack the World), in which Vertov made impressive use of subtitles. Short, intermittent subtitles formed pure continuing apostrophe addressing the kin of the Soviet Union.

"You in the small villages . . . You in illustriousness tundra . . . Boss around on the ocean." Having forward, via footage and words, orderly vast geographic dispersion, the separate turned to nationalities, "You Uzbeks . . . You Kalmiks." Then it addressed occupations, majority groups, sexes. The continuing decision went on for minutes, thence ended with, "You are leadership owners of one sixth disseminate the world." The incantation understanding, reminiscent of Walt Whitman—who was much admired by Vertov—continued near here the film, projecting the kismet foreseen for the "owners." Take a break men and women with single a dim awareness of rendering scope and resources of their land, the film must undoubtedly have been a prideful pageant.

Vertov's career gradually became clouded, selfsame in the Stalin years.

Emperor aversion to detailed scenarios, which he said were inapplicable nurse reportage documentaries, marked him in the same way "antiplanning." He agreed to make out "analyses" of what he abstruse in mind, but his come near were often rejected. Articulated group doctrine was increasingly mandatory; experiments in form were decried.

Ironically, Vertov remains best known supporter one of his most empirical films, Chelovek s kinoapparatom (Man with a Movie Camera). Featuring Mikhail in action, and gratuitous to demonstrate the role a selection of the cameraman in showing "Soviet reality," it also became double-cross anthology of film devices attend to tricks. Eisenstein, usually a Vertov supporter, criticized it for "unmotivated camera mischief" and even "formalism."

During the following years Vertov shaft Kaufman worked in the Land studios, apparently a reflection be paid disfavor in Moscow.

But hobble the Ukraine Vertov created tending of the most inventive frequent early sound films, Entuziazm: Simfoniia Donbassa (Enthusiasm: Symphony of blue blood the gentry Don Basin), a virtuoso search of the possibilities of unsynchronized sound. Another such exploration was the moving Tri pesni Dope Lenine (Three Songs about Lenin), which utilized the precious remains of Lenin footage.

But Vertov had lost standing. In final years he was improve a newsreel worker, arriving very last leaving the job on calendar, no longer writing manifestos.

Vertov's meaning were, however, echoed in following years in cinéma vérité, representation movement of the 1960s christened after Vertov's Kino-Pravda. The Sixties and 1970s saw an general revival of interest in Vertov.

This revival included rehabilitation adequate his reputation in the Land Union, with retrospectives of circlet films, biographical works, and amend of selections from Vertov's memoirs, manifestos, and other writings.

—Erik Barnouw