Man with a Movie Camera

For other uses, see Man with a Movie Camera (disambiguation).

Man with a Movie Camera (Russian: (Chelovek s kinoapparatom), Ukrainian:
(Liudyna z Kinoaparatom)
sometimes called A Man with a Movie Camera, The Man
with the Movie Camera, The Man with a Camera, The
Man with the Kinocamera, or Living Russia)[1] is an experimental 1929 silent documentary lm, with no story
and no actors,[2] by Soviet director Dziga Vertov, edited
by his wife Elizaveta Svilova.
Vertovs feature lm, produced by the lm studio
VUFKU, presents urban life in the Soviet cities of Kiev,
Kharkov, Moscow and Odessa.[3] From dawn to dusk Soviet citizens are shown at work and at play, and interacting
with the machinery of modern life. To the extent that it
can be said to have characters, they are the cameramen
of the title, the lm editor, and the modern Soviet Union
they discover and present in the lm.

The complete 68-minute movie.

stead, he took all the random clips and put it in a database,

which Svilova later edited. The narrative part of this process was her job. She had to go into that random pool of
clips that Vertov lmed, edit it, and put it in some kind of
This lm is famous for the range of cinematic techniques order. Vertovs purpose of all this was to break the mold
Vertov invents, deploys or develops, such as double expo- of a linear lm that the world was used to seeing in those
sure, fast motion, slow motion, freeze frames, jump cuts, days.
split screens, Dutch angles, extreme close-ups, tracking Vertovs message about the prevalence and unobtrusiveshots, footage played backwards, stop motion animations ness of lming was not yet truecameras might have
and a self-reexive style (at one point it features a split been able to go anywhere, but not without being noticed;
screen tracking shot; the sides have opposite Dutch an- they were too large to be hidden easily, and too noisy to
gles).
remain hidden anyway. To get footage using a hidden
In the 2012 Sight and Sound poll, lm critics voted Man camera, Vertov and his brother Mikhail Kaufman (the
with a Movie Camera the 8th best lm ever made.[4] In lms co-author) had to distract the subject with some2014 Sight and Sound also named the lm the best docu- thing else even louder than the camera lming them.
mentary lm of all time.[5]

The lm also features a few obvious stagings such as the

scene of a woman getting out of bed and getting dressed
and the shot of chess pieces being swept to the center of
the board (a shot spliced in backwards so the pieces ex1 Overview
pand outward and stand in position). The lm was criticized for both the stagings and the stark experimentation,
The lm has an unabashedly avant-garde style, and empossibly as a result of its directors frequent assailing of
phasizes that lm can go anywhere. For instance, the lm
ction lm as a new opiate of the masses.
uses such scenes as superimposing a shot of a cameraman setting up his camera atop a second, mountainous
camera, superimposing a cameraman inside a beer glass,
lming a woman getting out of bed and getting dressed, 2 Vertovs intentions
even lming a woman giving birth, and the baby being
taken away to be bathed.
Vertov born David Abelevich Kaufman was an
early pioneer in documentary lm-making during the late
1920s. He belonged to a movement of lmmakers known
as the kinoks, or kino-oki (kino-eyes). Vertov, along with
other kino artists declared it their mission to abolish all

Vertov was one of the rst to be able to nd a mid-ground

between a narrative media and a database form of media.
He shot all the scenes separately, having no intention of
making this lm into a regular movie with a storyline. In1

STYLISTIC ASPECTS

This manifesto echoes an earlier one that Vertov wrote in

1922, in which he disavowed popular lms he felt were
indebted to literature and theater.[6]

3 Stylistic aspects

In this shot, Mikhail Kaufman acts as a cameraman risking his

life in search of the best shot

Working within a Marxist ideology, Vertov strove to create a futuristic city that would serve as a commentary on
existing ideals in the Soviet world. This articial citys
purpose was to awaken the Soviet citizen through truth
and to ultimately bring about understanding and action.
The kinos aesthetic shined through in his portrayal of
electrication, industrialization, and the achievements of
workers through hard labour. This could also be viewed
as early modernism in lm.

non-documentary styles of lm-making. This radical approach to movie making led to a slight dismantling of lm
industry: the very eld in which they were working. Most
of Vertovs lms were highly controversial, and the kinok
movement was despised by many lmmakers of the time.
Vertovs crowning achievement, Man with a Movie Camera, was his response to critics who rejected his previous lm, A Sixth Part of the World. Critics declared that
Vertovs overuse of "intertitles" was inconsistent with the
lm-making style the 'kinoks subscribed to.

Some have mistakenly stated that many visual ideas, such

as the quick editing, the close-ups of machinery, the store
window displays, even the shots of a typewriter keyboard
are borrowed from Walter Ruttmann's Berlin: Symphony
of a Great City (1927), which predates Man with a Movie
Camera by two years, but as Vertov wrote to the German press in 1929,[7] these techniques and images had
been developed and employed by him in his Kino-Pravda
newsreels and documentaries for the last ten years, all of
which predate Berlin. Vertovs pioneering cinematic concepts actually inspired other abstract lms by Ruttmann
and others.

Working within that context, Vertov dealt with much fear

in anticipation of the lms release. He requested a warning to be printed in Soviet central Communist newspaper,
Pravda, which spoke directly of the lms experimental,
controversial nature. Vertov was worried that the lm
would be either destroyed or ignored by the public eye.
Upon the ocial release of Man with a Movie Camera,
Vertov issued a statement at the beginning of the lm,
which read:

Because of doubts before screening, and great anticipation from Vertovs pre-screening statements, the lm
gained great interest before even being shown. Once
the lm was nally screened, the public either embraced
or dismissed Vertovs stylistic choices. The pace of the
lms editingmore than four times faster than a typical
1929 feature, with approximately 1,775 separate shots
perturbed some viewers, including The New York Times'
reviewer Mordaunt Hall:

The lm Man with a Movie Camera

represents

The producer, Dziga Vertof, does not take

into consideration the fact that the human eye
xes for a certain space of time that which
holds the attention.[8]

AN EXPERIMENTATION IN THE
CINEMATIC COMMUNICATION
Of visual phenomena
WITHOUT THE USE OF INTERTITLES
(a lm without intertitles)
WITHOUT THE HELP OF A SCENARIO
(a lm without a scenario)
WITHOUT THE HELP OF THEATRE
(a lm without actors, without sets, etc.)
This new experimentation work by KinoEye is directed towards the creation of an authentically international absolute language of
cinema ABSOLUTE KINOGRAPHY on
the basis of its complete separation from the
language of theatre and literature.

On a technical note, Man with a Movie Camera's usage

of double exposure and seemingly 'hidden' cameras made
the movie come across as a very surreal montage rather
than a linear motion picture. Many of the scenes in the
lm contain people, which change size or appear underneath other objects (double exposure). Because of these
aspects, the movies overall speed is fast moving and enthralling. The sequences and close-ups capture emotional
qualities, which could not be fully portrayed through the
use of words. The lms lack of 'actors and 'sets makes
for a unique view of the everyday world; one directed toward the creation of a genuine, international, purely cinematic language, entirely distinct from the language of
theatre and literature.

Production

Man with a Movie Camera, depicting 24 hours in the life

of a Soviet city, was actually lmed over a period of about
3 years. Three Soviet cities Kharkiv, Kiev and Odessa
were the shooting locations.[9]

Soundtracks

The lm, originally released in 1929, was silent, and accompanied in theaters with live music. It has since been
released a number of times with dierent soundtracks:
1983 New composition[10] was performed by Un
Drame Musical Instantan, based on Vertovs writings among which his Ear Laboratory. Electronic
sounds, ambiences, voices were mixed to the 15piece orchestra. An LP[11] had been issued in 1984
on GRRR Records.
1995 New composition was performed by the
Alloy Orchestra of Cambridge, Massachusetts,
based on notes left by Vertov.[12] It incorporates
sound eects such as sirens, babies crying, crowd
noise, etc. Readily available on several dierent
DVD versions.[13]
1996 Norwegian composer Geir Jenssen (aka
Biosphere) was commissioned by the Troms International Film Festival to write a new soundtrack
for the movie, using the directors written instructions for the original accompanying piano player.
Jenssen wrote half of the soundtrack, turning the
other half to Per Martinsen (aka Mental Overdrive).
It was used for the Norwegian version Mannen med
lmkameraet at the 1996 TIFF.[14][15] Scored movie
not available after the festival. The soundtrack was
released in 2001 on Substrata 2.
1999 In the Nursery version,[16] made for the
Bradford International Film Festival. Currently
available on a few DVD versions, often paired with
the Alloy Orchestra score as an alternate soundtrack.
2001 Steve Jansen and Claudio Chianura recorded
a live soundtrack for a showing of the lm at the
Palazzina Liberty, in Milan on 11 December 1999.
This was subsequently released on CD as the album
Kinoapparatom in 2001.
2002 A version was released with a soundtrack
composed by Jason Swinscoe and performed by the
British jazz and electronic outt The Cinematic Orchestra (see Man with a Movie Camera (The Cinematic Orchestra album)). Originally made for the
Porto 2000 Film Festival. It was also released on
DVD in limited numbers by Ninja Tune. This DVD
edition is currently very much in demand and goes
for prices higher than the other DVD versions.

2002 A score for the lm by Michael Nyman was

premiered performed by the Michael Nyman Band
on May 17, 2002 at Londons Royal Festival Hall.
A British Film Institute DVD of the lm was released with Nymans score. This score is readily
available on several dierent DVD editions. It has
not been issued on CD, but some of the score is
reworked from material Nyman wrote for the Sega
Saturn video game Enemy Zero, which had a limited
CD release, and Nyman performs a brief excerpt,
Odessa Beach on his album, The Piano Sings.
2003 June Boston-based multi-theremin ensemble
The Lothars performed a semi-improvised soundtrack accompanying a screening of the lm at
the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, Massachusetts. They repeated their performance three
years later, in December, 2006 at the Galapagos Art
Space in Brooklyn, New York.
2006 Absolut Medien, Berlin released a DVD with
the 3soundtracks from Michael Nyman, In the nursery, and a new soundtrack from Werner Cee
2007 November France based group Art Zoyd
presented a scenic version of the lm with addition
video by artist Cecile Babiole. A studio recording
of the soundtrack was released on CD in 2012.[17]
2008 Norwegian electronic jazz trio Halt the Flux
performed their interpretation of the soundtrack for
Man with a Movie Camera[18] in Bergen International Film Festival. The trio consists of Anders
Wasserfall, Jrgen Vaage & Bjrnar Thyholdt.
2008 October London based Cinematic Orchestra
undertook a show featuring a screening of Vertovs
lm, which preceded the re-issue of the Man With
A Movie Camera DVD, in November.
2008 November San Francisco Bay Area based
Tricks of the Light Orchestra accompanied a screening of the lm on Sunday, November 30 at Brainwash Cafe in San Francisco.
2009 July; Mexican composer Alex Otaola performed live a new soundtrack for the lm at
Mexicos National Cinematheque. Aided by the
'Ensamble de Cmara/Accin' (Adrian Terrazasbass clarinet, Daniel Zlotnik-clarinet/ute, Mara
Emilia Martnez-ute, Luca Ortega-ute/piano,
Carlos Maldonado-upright, Jose Mara Arreoladrums/percussion), which consists of members from
The Mars Volta, Los Dorados, San Pascualito Rey,
Klezmerson and LabA
2009 The New York City based Voxare String Quartet performed music by Soviet Modernist composers
to accompany a screening of the lm.
2010 August Irish instrumental post-rock band
3epkano accompanied a screening of the lm with

7 FURTHER READING
an original live soundtrack in Fitzwilliam Square in
Dublin [19]
2010 July Ukrainian guitarist and composer Vitaliy Tkachuk with his quartet performed his own
soundtrack for the lm at a rst Ukrainian silent cinema festival Mute Nights in Odessa, the city where
this movie was made.[20]

[10] Man with a Movie Camera (Un Drame Musical Instantan), 01:06, 1929 on YouTube
[11] L'homme la camra (Un Drame Musical Instantan),
GRRR 1008, 1984
[12] ALLOY ORCHESTRA Current Touring Repertoire
[13] Man with a Movie Camera (Alloy Orchestra), 01:06:40,

2011: The French pianist Yann Le Long, the

1929 on YouTube
violoncellist Philippe Cusson and the percussionist
Stphane Grimalt performed for the rst time the [14]
soundtrack written by Le Long for the lm (20
May 2011) at the Centre Culturel du Vieux Couvent, [15]
Muzillac, France.
2014 March: Sarodist, beat maker, and multiinstrumentalist composer James Whetzel performed
live a 51 piece new all-original soundtrack to Man
With a Movie Camera at SIFF Cinema Uptown
in Seattle, WA, USA. Soundtrack features sarod,
electric sarod, analog synthesizers, accordion, mandolin, bass, guitar, dhol, dholak, darbouka, bendir,
rumba box, electronic drums, and 41 other pieces
of percussion. Whetzel successfully completed
a Kickstarter project for the soundtrack in July,
and it has been released: https://jameswhetzel.
bandcamp.com/album/man-with-a-movie-camera
Whetzel performed the soundtrack again October 22, 2014 at SIFF Uptown in Seattle and
will also be releasing a new version of the lm
with his soundtrack: http://www.siff.net/cinema/
man-with-a-movie-camera-with-dj-james-whetzel

References

[16] Man with a Movie Camera score by In the Nursery

[17] Eyecatcher/Man with a Movie Camera
[18] Halt the Flux clip from A Man With A Movie Camera
[19] ODwyer, Davin. 3epkano Cinema in the Park. The
Irish Times. Archived from the original on 1 August 2010.
Retrieved 7 August 2013.
[20] Soundtrack by Vitaliy Tkachuk

7 Further reading
Annette Michelson ed. Kevin O'Brien tr. Kino-Eye
: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, University of California Press, 1995.
Feldman, Seth R. Dziga Vertov. A Guide to References and Resources. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1979.

[1] List of alternate titles for Man with a Movie Camera

[2] Dziga Vertov. On Kinopravda. 1924, and The Man
with the Movie Camera. 1928, in Annette Michelson ed.
Kevin O'Brien tr. Kino-Eye : The Writings of Dziga Vertov, University of California Press, 1995.
[3] Movie Review Devushka s Korobkoy (1927) THE
SCREEN, September 17, 1929.
[4] Sight & Sound Revises Best-Films-Ever Lists. studiodaily. 1 August 2012. Retrieved 1 August 2012.
[5] Silent lm tops documentary poll. BBC News. Retrieved 1 August 2014.

Devaux, Frederique. L'Homme et la camera: de

Dziga Vertov. Crisne, Belgique: Editions Yellow
Now, 1990.
Nowell-Smith, Georey. The Oxford history of
World Cinema. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Roberts, Graham. The Man With the Movie Camera.
London: I.B.Tauris, 2000.

[8] Review by Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times, July 1, 2009

Tsivian, Yuri. Lines of Resistance: Dziga Vertov

and the Twenties. edited and with an introduction by Yuri Tsivian; Russian texts translated by Julian Gray; lmographic and biographical research,
Aleksandr Deriabin; co-researchers, Oksana Sarkisova, Sarah Keller, Theresa Scandio. Gemona,
Udine : Le Giornate del cinema muto, 2004.

[9] Ian Aitken (4 January 2013). The Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film. Routledge. p. 602.
ISBN 978-1-136-51206-3. Retrieved 14 August 2013.

Manovich, Lev. Database as a Symbolic Form.

Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001.

[6] Man With a Movie Camera by Grant Tracey

[7] Dziga Vertov. Letter from Berlin page 101, in Annette
Michelson ed. Kevin O'Brien tr. Kino-Eye : The Writings
of Dziga Vertov, University of California Press, 1995.

External links
Man with a Movie Camera is available for free download at the Internet Archive
Man with a Movie Camera at the Internet Movie
Database
Man with a Movie Camera at AllMovie
Man with a Movie Camera at Rotten Tomatoes
Man With a Movie Camera on the Reviews Of The
Rare And Obscure By John DeBartolo
Roland Fischer-Briand on the Storyboard
Listed as one of the Great Movies by Roger Ebert
Man With a Movie Camera: The Global Remake participatory video shot by people around the world
who are invited to record images interpreting the
original script of Vertovs Man With A Movie Camera

9 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

9.1

Text

Man with a Movie Camera Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%20with%20a%20Movie%20Camera?oldid=642751435 Contributors: Koyaanis Qatsi, Atorpen, Edward, Nommonomanac, Lexor, AaronSw, Dimadick, Humus sapiens, MusiCitizen, Girolamo Savonarola,
DragonySixtyseven, Jokestress, D6, Bender235, Nk, Grenavitar, Trapolator, KrisW6, Koavf, Lockley, Amire80, Quiddity, Staecker,
Trlovejoy, Bensin, Husky, R160K, Jonathan Taylor, HalifaxRage, Bgwhite, EamonnPKeane, Stassats, Gram123, ENeville, Welsh, Fallout boy, Analoguedragon, DVD R W, Veinor, SmackBot, Gogoguerilla, Gilliam, Ohnoitsjamie, Brawee, Kalatix, Mihai Capot, Snowmanradio, Warkk, Estrose, DDima, Victoria15, Kawayama, Hetar, Twas Now, Ewulp, Esn, Vertov1, Ipaat, Cydebot, Lugnuts, Dancter,
Ebyabe, Thijs!bot, Robsinden, Repsaj, Scottandrewhutchins, Bibi.org, Andrzejbanas, Matthew Fennell, Bzuk, Bongwarrior, Ermanon, Valerius Tygart, Holykow, Scottspencerjackson, Skier Dude, SuzanneKn, Ledenierhomme, Sparklism, VolkovBot, Adso44, MrNeutronSF,
WOSlinker, Philip Trueman, Lhw1, TXiKiBoT, Abtinb, Lola Voss, OlehI, SieBot, Phe-bot, Lucasbfrbot, Smilesfozwood, Polbot, Curtdbz,
TFCforever, Henry Merrivale, ImageRemovalBot, Satranc12, Drmies, Chris Elsay, PixelBot, Laure Nbata, Thingg, DumZiBoT, Addbot, J
ogungboye, Tassedethe, JEN9841, Luckas-bot, Yobot, Yellowwasp09, Davidkt, Otiuqok, AnomieBOT, Materialscientist, Xqbot, Wasserfall, Eric Blatant, FrescoBot, Jusses2, RedBot, Plasticspork, Elekhh, Jonkerz, Film Fan, Rz1115, WikitanvirBot, Roscoe W. Chandler,
Moonchargebatterylock, SporkBot, Babk Akifolu, Dagko, Vitgit, Gabriel Yuji, Rm1271, Te35b, Smmmaniruzzaman, BattyBot, ChrisGualtieri, Chukuriuk, Jsigned, GagahTridarmaP, Hilton drw, StarMajest and Anonymous: 89

9.2

Images

File:Commons-logo.svg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg License: ? Contributors: ? Original

artist: ?
File:Man_With_A_Movie_Camera_(Dziga_Vertov,_1929).ogv Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Man_
With_A_Movie_Camera_%28Dziga_Vertov%2C_1929%29.ogv License: Public domain Contributors: Full movie at the Internet Archive
Original artist: en:Dziga Vertov
File:Mikhail_kaufman_on_train.jpg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Mikhail_kaufman_on_train.jpg
License: Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Wiki_letter_w_cropped.svg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Wiki_letter_w_cropped.svg License:
CC-BY-SA-3.0 Contributors:
Wiki_letter_w.svg Original artist: Wiki_letter_w.svg: Jarkko Piiroinen

9.3

Content license

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0