Dziga Vertov

[HerrSchreck]

Only in this film however, as SO much of the communist film vision as well as Vertov in Kino Eye, 3 Songs of Lenin, etc... takes up the plight of the proletariot in terms of the peasantry... farmers, men & women working the land. So it's very much an "urban" symphony, and not an all inclusive sum Soviet compendium.

[Gregor Samsa]

I agree its an urban symphony, just a different kind of urban symphony. As for it not being representative of his work, Movie Camera didn't have the most positive reception in the USSR, so that atypicality could be a possible reason for it. (I haven't read the reviews in detail.)

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

Courtesy of the man himself here's Biosphere's synched up score to Man with a movie camera

[Donald Trampoline]

Incredible screening series of Dziga Vertov films.

Sorry for late notice, I found it late myself:

Kino-Eye: The Revolutionary Cinema of Dziga Vertov
Billy Wilder Theater
In-person:
Jan-Christopher Horak, director, UCLA Film & Television Archive (2/11, 2/12, 2/25); Margarita Nafpaktitis, Librarian for Slavic and East European Studies (2/17, 3/3, 3/9, 3/10).
"Experiencing the films on a big screen...is a deeply exciting experience, filled with energy and passion." —Los Angeles Times
"The most contentious and inventive of Soviet filmmakers." —LA Weekly

Born Denis Abelevich Kaufman, but best known by his pseudonym, Russian filmmaker and film theorist Dziga Vertov (1896–1954) holds a major place in the history of cinema. His films, bold aesthetic experiments in documenting contemporary life, have influenced generations of filmmakers—from Jean-Luc Godard to Richard Serra to Steve McQueen—and are as revelatory today as when they first premiered. This retrospective, the most comprehensive ever presented in Los Angeles, includes an extensive selection of Vertov’s silent films and sound features produced in what he called his “factory of facts.”

Included among the delights and rarities are the West Coast premiere of the EYE Film Institute Netherlands’ newly restored print of Man with a Movie Camera (1929) along with 11 programs drawn primarily from the Austrian Film Museum’s unparalleled Vertov collection, including 14 Kino-Week films from 1918–19, and all of his extant Kino-Pravda films from 1922–25. This one of kind series reveals Vertov’s exhilarating body of work to be, not a succession of individual films, but one continuously evolving movie. “Free of the limits of time and space,” Vertov wrote, his films would lead to “a fresh perception of the world” and a revolutionary passage from the Old to the New.

This series is modeled on the recent retrospective curated at The Museum of Modern Art by professor Yuri Tsivian of the University of Chicago, and Joshua Siegel, associate curator in the Department of Film at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The majority of 35mm prints presented have been generously loaned by the Austrian Film Museum, Vienna. Film notes are by Joshua Siegel, adapted, in part, from texts by Yuri Tsivian from the 23rd Pordenone Silent Film Festival catalog. We are indebted to the staff of MoMA and the Austrian Film Museum for their collegial assistance.

Programs & Events
February 25, 2012 - 7:30 pm
Man with a Movie Camera (U.S.S.R., 1929)

March 3, 2012 - 7:30 pm
Kino-Week, Nos. 1, 3, 4, 5, 21-25 (U.S.S.R., 1918);
Vertov Filmed in Person (U.S.S.R., 1922-'30);
Vertov Interviews (U.S.S.R., post-1935)

March 9, 2012 - 7:30 pm
Kino-Week, Nos. 31-35 (U.S.S.R., 1919);
The Eleventh Year (Odinnadtsatyi) (U.S.S.R., 1928)

March 10, 2012 - 7:30 pm
Kino-Pravda, Nos. 18, 20-22 (U.S.S.R., 1924-'25)

March 17, 2012 - 7:30 pm
Three Songs of Lenin (Tri pesni o Lenine) (U.S.S.R., 1935/'38);
Lullaby (Kolybel'naja) (U.S.S.R., 1937)

March 24, 2012 - 7:30 pm
Three Heroines (U.S.S.R., 1937);
For You, Front! (For the Front!/Tebe, Front!) (U.S.S.R, 1943)

March 31, 2012 - 7:30 pm
Kino-Eye (Kino-Glaz/Life Off-Guard) (U.S.S.R, 1924);
Kino-Pravda No. 23 (Radio Pravda) (U.S.S.R., 1925)

Past Programs & Events

February 17, 2012 - 7:30 pm
Kino-Pravda, Nos. 9-11, 13 (Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: A Film Poem Dedicated to the October Celebrations) (U.S.S.R., 1922);
Kino-Pravda, Nos. 14-17 (U.S.S.R., 1922-'23);
Soviet Toys (U.S.S.R., 1924)

February 13, 2012 - 7:30 pm
Stride, Soviet! (The Moscow Soviet in the Present, Past, and Future) (U.S.S.R., 1926)

February 12, 2012 - 7:00 pm
Enthusiasm: Symphony of the Donbass (Entuziazm: Sinfoniya Donbassa) (U.S.S.R., 1930);
Kino-Pravda, Nos. 1-8 (U.S.S.R., 1922)

February 11, 2012 - 7:30 pm
A Sixth Part of the World (A Kino-Eye Race around the U.S.S.R. Export and Import by the State Trading Organization of the U.S.S.R.) (U.S.S.R., 1926);
Kino-Pravda No. 19 (U.S.S.R., 1924)

[Zinoviev]

Looks like a fantastic series. Have any films in Vertov's Kino-Week series surfaced on DVD?

[knives]

If I remember correctly one appeared on the Animated Soviet Propaganda set Kino put out.

[Zinoviev]

Thanks, knives. The Soviet Toys short is amazing. Vertov is also credited with the 54-second 1924 animated short commemorating Lenin's death ("Lenin's Kino-Pravda"). I don't have the animated Soviet propaganda boxset yet, but I found the 1924 short on Youtube. I doubt that the musical accompaniment on the Youtube clip actually dates to 1924 -- the references to "our comrade Stalin" as "boss" seem more in keeping with 1930s lyrics.

A Cyrillic search in Youtube uncovers a good number of Kinopravda shorts and Kino-week as well:

киноправда вертов (kinopravda vertov)

кино-неделя вертов (kino-week vertov)

[SpiderBaby]

I have been curious as to who has the dvd rights to most of Vertov's films in the U.S. (A Sixth Part of the World, Kino-Eye, Three Songs of Lenin, The Eleventh Year)?

[markhax]

A Cyrillic search in Youtube uncovers a good number of Kinopravda shorts and Kino-week as well:

киноправда вертов (kinopravda vertov)

кино-неделя вертов (kino-week vertov)

Many thanks for this tip! The image quality of the ones I sampled is remarkably good!

[HerrSchreck]

I have been curious as to who has the dvd rights to most of Vertov's films in the U.S. (A Sixth Part of the World, Kino-Eye, Three Songs of Lenin, The Eleventh Year)?

I know that D. Shepard/Blackhawk distributed Kino Eye and Three Songs About Lenin on disc back in the day thru his old deal with Image Ent-- which still seem to be available.

[antnield]

Fourteen Kino-Week newsreels available to view on the Austrian Film Museum's website.

[DeprongMori]

Has anyone picked up the French release of the Dziga Vertov box set from Lobster? The descriptions are rather vague, but it states that there is one BluRay and three(?!?) DVDs in the set. (Other descriptions elsewhere give it as 3 discs total, with one of them being BluRay, which might make sense as a description of a dual-format release.) The Flicker Alley is advertised as one BluRay disc only.

So far, have not been able to find any reviews. If you've got it, what all is in the French set?

http://shop-lobsterfilms.com/DZIGA-VERTOV-Box-Set

(Note: I subsequently found reference to a brief review in French, but that doesn't mention the Blu/DVD disc count, which would lead me to believe that it is a simple dual-format release with no additional content on DVD. The count on the Lobster shop page is just likely wrong. Any confirmation appreciated. http://forum.criterionforum.org/forum/v ... 25#p512375 )

[tenia]

It is a simple DF release.

[Stefan Andersson]

Two documentaries by Vertov restored:
https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/dziga-v ... lost-films