'Man With A Movie Camera' posters
Client: BlackDragonPress
Client: BlackDragonPress
"Dissolve, slow motion, stop motion, split screen, double exposure, jump cuts... these techniques may be commonplace now, but 90 years ago they were nothing short of ground-breaking. And one film utilised them all - and more - in an exhilarating whirlwind of visual delight unlike anything that had ever been attempted previously.
That film - as any film student will know - is 'Man With A Movie Camera', an experimental 1929 Soviet silent documentary film directed by Dziga Vertov and edited by his wife Elizaveta Svilova. Considered by many if not most filmmakers and critics to be the greatest documentary film ever made, 'Man With A Movie Camera' broke with all film-making conventions of the time and in so doing revealed a truth about documentary and cinema:
At a time when Soviet film was instrumental in communicating State propaganda, Dziga Vertov and Elizaveta Svilova's experimental editing techniques and stylistic decisions made explicit to the audience that what they were watching - and by extension every film they had ever watched and would ever watch - was a deeply impressionistic, subjective and manipulated view of the world.
Made before its time, 'Man With A Movie Camera' was initially poorly received. Now, however, its stylistic and conceptual influence is almost ubiquitous across documentary and film genres. "
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