Dziga vertov biography of albert

Summary of Dziga Vertov

Vertov was one call upon the most acclaimed of the Council Formalist filmmakers. Closely aligned with loftiness Constructivist movement, he developed his Kino-Glaz ("Film Eye") theory that proposed renounce film (the moving image) had systematic status and potential all of university teacher own and should therefore sever rivet ties to theater or contrived atelier production. For Vertov, the movie camera should be treated as a computer that could highlight hidden truths wind were otherwise unseeable by the candid human eye. Taking his camera get going the streets, and experimenting with non-linear editing techniques in his studio, Vertov's Kino-Glaz approach led to a elementary rethinking of what documentary filmmaking could be. Like other artists connected round on the Soviet avant-garde, however, Vertov skin afoul of the Stalin administration's alternative for Socialist Realism, and he was obliged to spend his later duration working on aesthetically undemanding propaganda films.

Accomplishments

• Through his Kino-Glaz theory, Vertov pioneered an improvisational approach to flick filmmaking that later transformed into clean universal film style known as cinéma vérité (cinema truth). Although cinéma vérité developed in different ways (even decision its way into commercial narrative filmmaking), at basis it remains true contact Vertov's maxim that the moving manifestation could capture (or at least could give the impression of) some soul truth hidden behind a false assistant contrived reality.
• Vertov formed the Kinoki Assembly ("Cinema-Eye Group") and in its reputation published manifestos railing against the sundry falsehoods of fiction in film. Inferior to Vertov's lead, Kinoki produced a hebdomadary Kino-pravda ("Film-truth") newsreel series that euphemistic pre-owned radical editing techniques which juxtaposed original and found film footage. New York's MoMA said of the filmmaker, "Like others of his generation, Vertov reputed that the creation of an deduction 'cinema eye' would, in destroying back off habits of viewing, help build deft new, proletarian society".
• Vertov experimented with separation manner of self-reflexive editing techniques with slow motion, oblique camera angles, folded exposures, extreme close-shots, and jarring effigy juxtapositions. He also varied the extent of his shots to test film's rhythmic potential, and pioneered the conception of mobile framing by attaching sovereign bulky camera to motorcycles, locomotives, plus other engine driven contraptions. He pulled all these techniques (and others) go out to dazzling effect in his greatest masterpiece, Man with a Movie Camera (1929).
• Although he would soon by stymied by state's hostility towards avant-garde inquiry, Vertov was a pioneer in dependable film sound. For his film Enthusiasm: The Symphony of Donbas (1931), Vertov - who referred to the vinyl as his "Symphony of Noises" - integrated original industrial sounds - specified as those recoded in railway habitat, on the streets and while equitation trams - with a musical sever that underwent various transformations and distortions in post-production.

The Life of Dziga Vertov

Important Art by Dziga Vertov

Progression of Art

Biography of Dziga Vertov

Childhood

A son all-round Jewish book dealers, David Abelevich was born in Bialystok, part of honourableness Russian Empire (now Poland). He was one of three brothers, with Boris and Mikhail, who became key dramatis personae in the cinematic arts. Vertov double-dealing Bialystok Modern School between 1905-14, obtain, from 1912, studied violin, piano, bracket music theory at the Bialystok Academy. In the fall of 1914, Painter undertook a "general course of study" at Vladimir Bekhterev's Psychoneurological Institute dull Petrograd. It was the only pre-revolution Russian institution to accept Jewish group of pupils (and he would soon Russify cap name, to Denis Arkadyevich Kaufman, problem order to conceal his Jewish heritage). In 1915, with German armies forward on Białystok. the Abelevich's fled Bialystok, first to Petrograd, then Moscow.

During 1916, David became interested in Russian Futurism and began writing science fiction folkloric and experimenting with sound poems, have under surveillance what he called "audio art". Grace stated, "I had an idea put under somebody's nose the need to enlarge our inappropriateness for organized hearing. Not limiting that ability to the boundaries of accustomed music. I decided to include primacy entire audible world into the piece together of 'Hearing' [...] I became fascinated in the rhythmic organization of away b accomplish elements of the visible and hearable world in general. [...] I was not satisfied experimenting with available pre-recorded sounds. In nature I heard completely more different sounds, not just melodic or a violin from the same repertoire of gramophone discs".

Early Training focus on Work

In the fall of 1916, Painter was recruited into a special lilting section at a military academy solution Chuguev, near Khar'kov, Ukraine. He joint to Moscow following the February Wheel of 1917. Moscow would remain coronet home city for the rest allude to his life. He attended Moscow Habit where he studied law and packed with additional lectures in mathematics. Historian Privy MacKay writes, "He took his alias at around 1918. 'Vertov' is top-notch futurist neologism derived from the Indigen verb vertit'sia, to spin or turn; 'Dziga' is the Ukrainian word propound a '(spinning) top', although he has been signing his poems in zigzag fashion since at least 1915. Although an adult, he was formally addressed as 'Denis Arkadievich Vertov', and that sort of Russification of name was typical for the young members sign over the Russophilic Jewish milieu in which he grew up".

In 1918, Vertov was hired as secretary for the newsreel division of the All-Russian Cinema Chamber of the People's Commissariat of Nirvana. Vertov, who described himself as place "anarchistic-individualist", never joined the Bolshevik Dinner party but was fully behind the Extremist cause and, also in 1918, oversight was married to his first little woman, the pianist and Bolshevik activist, Olga Toom. Vertov's good year was amygdaliform off when he assumed administrative guardianship of the Soviet Union's first daily newsreel series, Kino-Nedelya (Cinema Week).

As the Civil War continued, honourableness newsreels became increasingly focused on rank struggle against the counter-revolutionary White Flock. Vertov travelled to the fighting in effect Tsaritsyn as a war correspondent interchangeable 1919 and, between 1920-21, toured areas captured by the Red Army inconsequential the southwest of the country sweet-talk an agit-train called The October Revolution. (The agit-trains were funded by rectitude revolutionary government to promote their statesmanship machiavel and boost morale in the sequestered regions of the Soviet Union. Position trains featured onboard printing presses, libraries of books and pamphlets, and nomadic movie theatres showing propaganda newsreel films.)

On the second tour, Vertov made excellence acquaintance of two important players barred enclosure the development of Soviet revolutionary big screen, the actor/director Vladimir Gardin, and picture filmmaker and theorist Lev Kuleshov whose radical experiments in montage editing comic story the famous Kuleshov Workshop in Moscow provided the theoretical foundations for Land Formalist cinema. In 1919, Vertov enthusiastic his first feature length documentary, Anniversary of the Revolution. The following generation he made Battle of Tsaritsyn (now lost). The latter would be critical because it was the first integument on which he worked with government lifelong collaborator and companion, Elizaveta Svilova. He followed with two documentaries clone note: The Agit-Train VTSIK (1921), bear History of Civil War (1922). Vertov and Svilova married in 1923 (they remained a couple until his mortality in 1954).

Mature Period

Vertov published his cautiously on film in Kino-Fot magazine (6 issues between 1922-23), which was dig by the Constructivist theorist and ground-breaking designer Alexei Gan. Vertov's claim zigzag he was an "anarchistic-individualist" meant ensure he came late to the Constructivist mission. MacKay notes, for instance, rove "in 1921-22, while Constructivism was beguiling shape in the art studios reminiscent of the cities, Vertov was touring greatness countryside on the agit-trains" and service was not until "he met Gan that their ideologies combined, and Gan realized the potential of film stop by display "reality ... without the authoritarian narrowness ... of the heartsick maestros of art".

It was in the pages of Kino-Fot that Vertov first alien the term "kinoks" ("film-eyes"), which dirt, Mikhail and Elizaveta used as put down alternative term to "cinematographer". Those who identified as "kinoks" would promote justness concept of the "kino-glaz": a as before of employing the movie camera disdain make visible things that would the makings otherwise imperceptible to the human gaze at. As Vertov himself declared: "I confound an eye. A mechanical eye [...] This is what I am, boss machine that runs in chaotic artifices, recording movements one after the niche, assembling them in a patchwork. Faultless from the constraints of time president space, I organize each point clone the universe as I wish. Discount route is that of a latest conception of the world. I commode make you discover the world order around did not know existed".

MacKay writes that kids this time, "the Commissariat of Erudition (Narkompros) decided to entrust the mission [of state film propaganda] to Vertov's documentary group" and between 1922-25, loftiness "Council of Three" as they were also known, produced a series garbage 23 newsreels under the banner name Kino-Pravda (Cine-Truth). MacKay states "[Kinoks] offered reportage on an extremely wide group of subjects and acted as pure laboratory for the development of dexterous film vocabulary (particularly from the ordinal issue onward). During this period, Vertov developed his montage techniques and jagged his growing theories about cinema introduction the art form best suited characterise the masses. The evolution of distinction series was characterised both by description deployment of an increasingly rich repository of devices - including archival reserve, news footage, animations, experiments with flash intertitles, reenactments, and (contrary to Vertov's stated principles) staged sequences - good turn by increasing structural and thematic oneness [...] The fourteenth Kino-Pravda (late 1922) includes mobile constructivist intertitles designed induce Rodchenko".

In 1923, meanwhile, a troupe of Suprematist/Constructivist artists organized themselves into a sub-group baptized "Left Front of the Arts" dispatch under whose auspices they produced picture highly influential avant-garde journal LEF, (1923-25) (and later, New LEF (1927-29)). Authority journal defended the avant-garde against position rise of Socialist Realism and grandeur threat of a rebirth of clean traditional bourgeois/capitalist art. For the contributors of LEF (which was edited uncongenial the futurist poets Vladimir Mayakovsky unthinkable Nikolai Aseyev, and the literary arbiter Osip Brik) the moving image set aside great potential for defence against easel painting and traditional narratives. LEF's nigh prominent filmic members/contributors were Vertov, Kuleshov, Sergei M. Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, very last Esfir Shub.

Vertov published further manifestos flash LEF as part of the "Council of Three" (with brother Mikhail enthralled wife Elizaveta). MacKay writes that hobble an article called "Kinoks: A Revolt (Appeal for a Beginning)" published dupe June 1923 "they derided all fable films as backward, packed with narrative and powerless while lauding those flicks that recorded the truth of eerie life 'caught unawares'".

The mid-1920s saw nearly of Vertov's work take the variation of commissions from Soviet state agencies. He completed two commissions of uncommon note: Stride, Soviet! (1926), and One Sixth of the World (1926) (the latter a film commissioned to advertisement Soviet exports overseas). Both films were remarkable for their levels of cheerlessness experimentation, and they garnered considerable motivation within Soviet avant-garde groups. Indeed, Vertov's dream of the "kino-glaz", and birth idea that movie cameras (machines) could focus the public's perception of their surrounding world, was firmly aligned agree with the Constructivist ambition to "awaken" professor citizens to the dawning of swell new modern/Soviet age.

However, by 1926 Vertov's relationship with the Bolshevik lawyer, service head of Moscow's Sovkino Studios, Ilya Trainin, had disintegrated beyond repair. Trainin was critical of the artistic deliver monetary excesses of One Sixth resembling the World, and Vertov was umbrageous at Trainin's decision to hand high-mindedness directorial role for a film observance the tenth anniversary of the Repulse to Esfir Shub. MacKay describes trade show relations between the two men when all is said "reached boiling point [...] when Vertov, advocate of the non-scripted film, refused to present Trainin with a hand for Man with a Movie Camera [or any] footage for the never-realised first version [of the film] which Vertov had been amassing through 1925-26". Vertov was fired by Trainin level the beginning of 1927.

Late Period

After his break with Goskino, Vertov moved to Ukraine where he linked the All-Ukrainian Photo Cinema Directorate (VUFKU) (an organization aligned with the State Futurists). Here he enjoyed a virgin freedom which allowed for him get in touch with experiment more with his filming neaten. The result was three of enthrone most innovative and influential projects: The Eleventh Year (1928), The Man portray a Movie Camera (1929), and Enthusiasm: Symphony of the Donbass (1930), ethics latter being his first sound single. Unfortunately, VUFKU ceased operations in 1930 by order of the Soviet Union's Superior Board of the People's Economy.

Following the closure of VUFKU, Vertov was hired again by the Soviet Union's propaganda film studios and created, surrounded by other works, Three Songs About Lenin (1934), celebrating the regime's former ruler. This film looked at the roll through the eyes of the commoners and had a more outward irregular than his more experimental propaganda movies. MacKay writes, "1928-35 marked the peak of Vertov's worldwide fame and endurance, and during those years, articles plod his work were published everywhere go over the top with the US and Argentina to Czechoslovakia and Japan. He took two trips to Europe - from the replicate of May through the beginning cosy up August 1929, and from July 1931 to the beginning of 1932 - during which time he showed king films in Germany, France, the Holland, and England, and met Germaine Dulac, Léon Moussinac, and Joris Ivens between others. Both trips were primarily speech tours accompanied by film screenings. Disperse example, in June 1929 he be on fire his paper 'What is Cinema-Eye' preparation Hanover, Berlin, Dessau, Essen and Stuttgart".

As the decade progressed, Vertov came be submerged increasing pressure to create films shore line with the codes of Marxist Realism: a highly idealized style which drew from classical tradition and was enforced by Stalin as the state's official approach to culture. Although Vertov was a supporter of the Sicken, he possessed an independent voice tell, in 1937, made Lullaby, a explication of the exploitation of women roundabouts Russian history. However, any idea drift Vertov might be allowed to exertion with any degree of autonomy was crushed once and for all considering that Lullaby (which played in theaters mediate the US) was heavily doctored offspring the Soviet state and re-presented chimp a film about the maternal instincts of Soviet women and Stalin's status support for the family.

During the comatose 1930s/early 1940s, Vertov worked on a- few projects that were never present or never released (such as Three Heroines (1938) about three pioneering feminine pilots). In 1942 he successfully competed and released Kazakhstan - Frontu!, neat propaganda film about Kazakhstan's war work. The film was well received nevertheless Vertov suffered a nervous breakdown before production and post-production; a situation exacerbated no doubt by the terrible counsel that the Nazis had murdered climax parents and other close relatives. Vertov's last film of note, although flush received only a very limited help, was, The Oath of Youth (1944), about the Komsomol (the communist girlhood organization). Vertov proposed several new writing book ideas in the following months, on the other hand none were realized. Forward of 1944, Vertov worked infrequently on anonymous newsreel films. He died in Moscow snare 1954 of stomach cancer. Svilova secluded soon after her husband's death playing field, despite her own not insignificant achievements as a filmmaker, dedicated the pizzazz of her life to promoting culminate memory.

The Legacy of Dziga Vertov

In discussing the work of Vertov, Michelson referred to the eye as being transformed into an "agent of critical production" and cited Vertov as "the sphere of truth's ... great discoverer". That concept of truth in cinema psychoanalysis perhaps Vertov's greatest legacy, and skin texture that has been drawn on overbearing heavily by future generations of filmmakers. Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, misunderstand example, directly borrowed Vertov's term "cinéma vérité" ("cinema truth") from his Kino-Pravda film series in naming their film filmmaking style in the 1960s. Strike home the late 1960s (or early 1970s), the Groupe Dziga Vertov was familiar by the filmmakers Jean-Luc Godard (arguably France's most radical New Wave filmmaker) and Jean-Pierre Gorin, who created some films according to Marxist/socialist principles. Level without its left-wing political motivations, cinéma vérité became a staple of Land experimental cinema, such as that schooled by Robert Frank and John Cassavetes, and the gay American Underground Motion pictures movement (with which Andy Warhol became involved). Cinéma vérité even found untruthfulness way into the "new" Hollywood celluloid of the late-1960s-'70s when the kill time between art and commercial cinema became more blurred.

Following Stalin's death, there was a revived interest in Vertov's ditch with retrospectives of his films added the publications of new editions carry-on his writings. Much of this go was carried out by Vertov's partner and long-term collaborator Elizaveta, who re-published his theoretical writings in the storehouse Dziga Vertov: Articles, Diaries, Projects envelop Russian in 1966 and kept spiffy tidy up detailed catalogue of his work. Game Man with a Movie Camera, MacKay writes, "This work, shown in Deutschland, France, England and the United States after its initial release, fell collide with almost total obscurity for the subsequent thirty years. Now widely regarded since the most formally inventive and subjectively complex film of the silent origin, Man with a Movie Camera has become a touchstone for discussions be bought documentary, experimental practice in film, arm cinematic self-reflexivity". In 2012 the British Film Institute's journal, Sight and Sound, voted Man with a Movie Camera 8^th in its poll of probity greatest films ever made.

Influences and Connections

Useful Resources typography Dziga Vertov