Dziga Vertov
Dziga Vertov (Russian: Дзига Вертов, born David Abelevich Kaufman, Russian: Дави́д А́белевич Ка́уфман, and also known as Denis Kaufman; 2 January 1896 [O.S. 21 December 1895] – 12 February 1954) was a Soviet pioneer documentary film and newsreel director, as well as a cinema theorist.[1] 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. He was a member of the Kinoks collective, with Elizaveta Svilova and Mikhail Kaufman.
In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Abelevich and the family name is Kaufman.
Dziga Vertov
12 February 1954 (aged 58)
Soviet
Film director, cinema theorist
1917–1954
Kino-Eye (1924)
A Sixth Part of the World (1926)
Man with a Movie Camera (1929)
Enthusiasm (1931)
Boris Kaufman (brother)
Mikhail Kaufman (brother)
In the 2012 Sight & Sound poll, critics voted Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera (1929) the eighth-greatest film ever made.[2]
Vertov's younger brothers Boris Kaufman and Mikhail Kaufman were also noted filmmakers, as was his wife, Yelizaveta Svilova.[3]
Biography[edit]
Early years[edit]
Vertov was born David Abelevich Kaufman into a Jewish family in Białystok, Poland, then a part of the Russian Empire. He Russified his Jewish name and patronymic, David Abelevich, to Denis Arkadievich at some point after 1918.[4] Vertov studied music at Białystok Conservatory until his family fled from the invading German Army to Moscow in 1915. The Kaufmans soon settled in Petrograd, where Vertov began writing poetry, science fiction, and satire. In 1916–1917 Vertov was studying medicine at the Psychoneurological Institute in Saint Petersburg and experimenting with "sound collages" in his free time. He eventually adopted the name "Dziga Vertov", which translates loosely from Ukrainian as 'spinning top'.[5]
Early writings[edit]
Vertov is known for many early writings, mainly while still in school, that focus on the individual versus the perceptive nature of the camera lens, which he was known to call his "second eye".
Most of Vertov's early work was unpublished, and few manuscripts survived after the Second World War, though some material surfaced in later films and documentaries created by Vertov and his brothers, Boris Kaufman and Mikhail Kaufman.
Vertov is known for quotes on perception, and its ineffability, in relation to the nature of qualia (sensory experiences).[6]
After the October Revolution[edit]
After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, at the age of 22, Vertov began editing for Kino-Nedelya (Кино-Неделя, the Moscow Cinema Committee's weekly film series, and the first newsreel series in Russia), which first came out in June 1918. While working for Kino-Nedelya he met his future wife, the film director and editor, Elizaveta Svilova, who at the time was working as an editor at Goskino. She began collaborating with Vertov, beginning as his editor but becoming assistant and co-director in subsequent films, such as Man with a Movie Camera (1929), and Three Songs About Lenin (1934).
Vertov worked on the Kino-Nedelya series for three years, helping establish and run a film-car on Mikhail Kalinin's agit-train during the ongoing Russian Civil War between Communists and counterrevolutionaries. Some of the cars on the agit-trains were equipped with actors for live performances or printing presses; Vertov's had equipment to shoot, develop, edit, and project film. The trains went to battlefronts on agitation-propaganda missions intended primarily to bolster the morale of the troops; they were also intended to stir up revolutionary fervor of the masses.
In 1919, Vertov compiled newsreel footage for his documentary Anniversary of the Revolution; he also supervised the filming of his project The Battle for Tsaritsyn (1919).[7] in 1921 he compiled History of the Civil War. The so-called "Council of Three," a group issuing manifestoes in LEF, a radical Russian newsmagazine, was established in 1922; the group's "three" were Vertov, his (future) wife and editor Elizaveta Svilova, and his brother and cinematographer Mikhail Kaufman.[8] Vertov's interest in machinery led to a curiosity about the mechanical basis of cinema.
His statement "We: Variant of a Manifesto" was published in the first issue of Kino-Fot, published by Aleksei Gan in 1922. It commenced with a distinction between "kinoks" and other approaches to the emergent cinematic industry:
Family[edit]
Vertov's brother Boris Kaufman was a cinematographer who worked with Jean Vigo on L'Atalante (1934) and much later for directors such as Elia Kazan in the United States who won an Oscar for his work on On the Waterfront. His other brother, Mikhail Kaufman, worked with Vertov on his films until he became a documentarian in his own right. Mikhail Kaufman's directorial debut was the film In Spring (1929).
In 1923, Vertov married his long-time collaborator Elizaveta Svilova.[23]
Influence and legacy[edit]
Vertov's legacy still lives on today. His ideas are echoed in cinéma vérité, the movement of the 1960s named after Vertov's Kino-Pravda. The 1960s and 1970s saw an international revival of interest in Vertov.[24]
The independent, exploratory style of Vertov influenced and inspired many filmmakers and directors like the Situationist Guy Debord and independent companies such as Vertov Industries in Hawaii. 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 the term cinéma vérité 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.[25]
This revival of Vertov's legacy included rehabilitation of his reputation in the Soviet Union, with retrospectives of his films, biographical works, and writings. In 1962, the first Soviet monograph on Vertov was published, followed by another collection, "Dziga Vertov: Articles, Diaries, Projects". In 1984, to recall the 30th anniversary of Vertov's death, three New York cultural organizations put on the first American retrospective of Vertov's work.[26]
New Media theorist Lev Manovich suggested Vertov as one of the early pioneers of database cinema genre in his essay Database as a symbolic form.
Vertov's work has inspired notable artist and filmmaker William Kentridge.[27]