Dziga Vertov
Biography
Dziga Vertov (born David Abelevich Kaufman) was a Soviet pioneer documentary film and newsreel director, as well as a cinema theorist. His filming practices and theories influenced the cinéma vérité style of documentary movie-making and the Dziga Vertov Group, a radical film-making cooperative which was active from 1968 to 1972. The independent, exploratory style of Vertov influenced and inspired many filmmakers and directors. The Dziga Vertov Group borrowed his name. In 1960, Jean Rouch used Vertov's filming theory when making Chronicle of a Summer. His partner Edgar Morin coined Cinéma vérité term when describing the style, using direct translation of Vertov’s KinoPravda. The Free Cinema movement in the United Kingdom during the 1950s, the Direct Cinema in North America in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the Candid Eye series in Canada in the 1950s, all essentially owed a debt to Vertov. In the 2012 Sight & Sound poll, critics voted Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera (1929) the 8th best film ever made.
Known For & Full Filmography5 Titles
Movie - 1922, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: A bet is placed on the outcome of the Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries / The verdict / People in streetcars and on the street / A crashed aircraft / Reconstruction of streetcar line 13 / Peacetime use of tanks – airport construction work.
Movie - 2024, 2h 15m • as Self (archive footage)
The film deals with intellectual activities which are usually hidden from the human eye. It concerns doing research in film archives, searching for missing films and bringing them back to life. It is a documentary about the work of Dziga Vertov, a prominent soviet director, and the restoration of the director’s original concept of the films Anniversary of the Revolution (1918), The History of the Civil War (1921), Man with a Movie Camera (1929).
Movie - 2002, 2h 15m • as (archive footage)
The film "All the Vertovs" tells about the Kaufman brothers-David, Mikhail and Boris. All three are world-class filmmakers. Each of them managed to achieve the highest level of proficiency in the profession, each had their own vision of the world and the gift to embody it on the screen in a unique, deeply individual manner.
Movie - 1966, 2h 15m • as Self (archive footage)
Documentary portrait of Dziga Vertov, father of documentary cinema.
Movie - 1963, 2h 15m • as Self (archive footage)
“The Magic Beam” is a film essay woven together from newsreels and documentary material from different decades, fragments of hundreds of non-fiction and fiction Soviet films of the 1910s-1960s.