Man with a Movie Camera: screening

This event is part of Ukrainian Retrospective, an educational program dedicated to Ukrainian cinema history in partnership with the Ukrainian Institute London and Dovzhenko Center.

Director: Dzyga Vertov

Genre: Experimental documentary Year: 1929  Duration: 72 min

Language: Silent

Dzyga Vertov’s pioneering experimentation with film theory and editing techniques transformed the film into a methodological guide for subsequent generations of filmmakers.

The screening will be be preceded by a pre-recorded introduction from Yuliia Kovalenko, film critic, program director Docudays UA.

Man With a Movie Camera is one of the major manifestos of the global cinema avant-garde. In accordance with the aesthetic principles of director Dziga Vertov, the film was shot without a script.

With Man with a Movie Camera, Vertov included experiments he had been conducting for many years as well as theoretical groundwork in camerawork and montage, turning the film into a methodological manual for future generations of directors. The lens of the talented cameraman Mykhail Kaufman captures the colourful life of the Ukrainian megalopolises of Odesa, Kharkiv, and Kyiv under the New Economic Policy.

The film was shot as a chronicle of one day in the life of a big city, recorded with a camera 'cine eye'. The inspiration for the film belongs to Mikhail Kaufman, the cameraman and the director’s brother. He suggested that Vertov should create a ‘cameraman’s diary’. This film ended up being the last joint project of this creative and talented team.