DZIGA VERTOV (1947)

Pseudonym of DENIS ARKADYEVICH KAUFMAN.

Soviet motion-picture director whose kino-glas or film-eye theory -that the camera is an instrument much like the human eye that is best used to explore the actual happenings of real life- had an international impact on the development of documentaries and cinema realism during the 1920s.

His films using influential technical innovations are studies of the visible world attempts to create a unique language of the cinema free from theatrical influence and artificial studio staging.

As a newsreel cameraman during the Russian Civil War he filmed events that were the basis for such factual films as the Battle of Tsaritsin (1920) and Godovshchina revolyutsii (1918, The Anniversary of the October Revolution).

At 22 he was the director of a government cinema department.
The following year he formed the Kinoki (the Film-Eye Group) which subsequently issued a series of manifestos against theatricalism in films and in support of Vertov´s film-eye theory.
In 1922 the group led by Vertov initiated a weekly newsreel called Kinopravda (Film Truth) that creatively integrated newly filmed factual material and older news footage.

The subject matter of his later feature films is also life itself. Form and technique are pre-eminent. Vertov experimented with slow motion, camera angles, enlarged close-ups and crosscutting for comparisons. He attached the camera to locomotives, motorcycles and other moving objects. He held shots on the screen for varying lengths of time, a technique that contributes to the rhythmic flow of his films.

Outstanding among Vertov´s pictures are Shagay, Sovet (1925, Soviet, Forward), Shestaya chast mira (1926, One-Sixth of the Earth), Odinnadsaty (1928, The Eleventh), Chelovek skinoapparatom (1929, The Man with the Movie Camera) his best known film outside the USSR, Sinfoniya Donbassa (1930, Symphony of the Donbass) and Tri pesni o Lenine (1934, Three Songs about Lenin).

He later became a director in the Central Documentary Film Studio USSR.