"Director: Dziga Vertov"

• Man with a Movie Camera (and other works by Dziga Vertov) (1929) | Blu Ray | (17/07/2017) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  "An experiment in the creative communication of visible events without the aid of inter-titles, a scenario or theatre "aiming at creating a truly international absolute language of cinema," is how the inter-titles describe what is about to be seen. Bold claims indeed, but in its awesome sophistication The Man with a Movie Camera does live up to them, making it one of the most contemporary of silent movies. The subject, the life of a city from dawn to dusk, was not original even for 1928, but its treatment was--the cameraman as voyeur, social commentator and prankster, exploiting every trick permissible with the technology of the day (slow motion, dissolves, split screens, freeze frames, stop motion animation, etc). A young woman stirs in her bed, apparently fighting a nightmare in which a cameraman is about to be crushed by an oncoming train. She wakes up, and the sequence is revealed to be a simple trick shot. As she blinks her weary eyes, the shutters of her window mimic her viewpoint, and the iris of the camera spins open. Self-reflexive wit like this abounds here--there's even a delicious counterpoint made between the splicing of film and the painting of a woman's nails.The film was the brainchild of the Moscow-based film-maker Dziga Vertov (real name Denis Arkadyevich Kaufman), a furiously inventive poet of the cinema who made innumerable shorts about daily life (such as the much-quoted "Kino-Pravda"), and played at candid camerawork and cinema vérité long before they became the clichés of the television age. The editing has a fantastic abandon that makes most pop videos look sluggish. --David Thompson

• Man With a Movie Camera (Blu-ray) | Blu Ray | (27/07/2015) from £16.83   |  Saving you £4.42 (28.39%)   |  RRP £19.99

  "An experiment in the creative communication of visible events without the aid of inter-titles, a scenario or theatre "aiming at creating a truly international absolute language of cinema," is how the inter-titles describe what is about to be seen. Bold claims indeed, but in its awesome sophistication The Man with a Movie Camera does live up to them, making it one of the most contemporary of silent movies. The subject, the life of a city from dawn to dusk, was not original even for 1928, but its treatment was--the cameraman as voyeur, social commentator and prankster, exploiting every trick permissible with the technology of the day (slow motion, dissolves, split screens, freeze frames, stop motion animation, etc). A young woman stirs in her bed, apparently fighting a nightmare in which a cameraman is about to be crushed by an oncoming train. She wakes up, and the sequence is revealed to be a simple trick shot. As she blinks her weary eyes, the shutters of her window mimic her viewpoint, and the iris of the camera spins open. Self-reflexive wit like this abounds here--there's even a delicious counterpoint made between the splicing of film and the painting of a woman's nails.The film was the brainchild of the Moscow-based film-maker Dziga Vertov (real name Denis Arkadyevich Kaufman), a furiously inventive poet of the cinema who made innumerable shorts about daily life (such as the much-quoted "Kino-Pravda"), and played at candid camerawork and cinema vérité long before they became the clichés of the television age. The editing has a fantastic abandon that makes most pop videos look sluggish. --David Thompson

• Man With A Movie Camera | DVD | (10/07/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  An experiment in the creative communication of visible events without the aid of inter-titles, a scenario or theatre "aiming at creating a truly international absolute language of cinema," is how the inter-titles describe what is about to be seen. Bold claims indeed, but in its awesome sophistication The Man with a Movie Camera does live up to them, making it one of the most contemporary of silent movies. The subject, the life of a city from dawn to dusk, was not original even for 1928, but its treatment was--the cameraman as voyeur, social commentator and prankster, exploiting every trick permissible with the technology of the day (slow motion, dissolves, split screens, freeze frames, stop motion animation, etc). A young woman stirs in her bed, apparently fighting a nightmare in which a cameraman is about to be crushed by an oncoming train. She wakes up, and the sequence is revealed to be a simple trick shot. As she blinks her weary eyes, the shutters of her window mimic her viewpoint, and the iris of the camera spins open. Self-reflexive wit like this abounds here--there's even a delicious counterpoint made between the splicing of film and the painting of a woman's nails.The film was the brainchild of the Moscow-based film-maker Dziga Vertov (real name Denis Arkadyevich Kaufman), a furiously inventive poet of the cinema who made innumerable shorts about daily life (such as the much-quoted "Kino-Pravda"), and played at candid camerawork and cinema vérité long before they became the clichés of the television age. The editing has a fantastic abandon that makes most pop videos look sluggish. --David Thompson

• Man with a Movie Camera (and other works by Dziga Vertov) (1929) | Blu Ray | (18/04/2016) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Eureka Entertainment to release MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA, the experimental 1929 silent documentary film by Soviet director Dziga Vertov, in a limited-edition 4-Disc Dual-Format edition as part of the Masters of Cinema Series on 18 April 2016. Voted one of the ten best films ever made in the Sight & Sound 2012 poll, and the best documentary ever in a subsequent poll in 2014, Man With A Movie Camera (Chelovek s kinoapparatom) stands as one of cinema's most essential documents - a dazzling exploration of the possibilities of image-making as related to the everyday world around us. The culmination of a decade of experiments to render the chaos of visual phenomena filling the universe, Dziga Vertov's masterwork uses a staggering array of cinematic devices to capture the city at work and at play, as well as the machines that power it. Presented in a definitive new restoration from EYE Film Institute in Amsterdam and Lobster Films, the film is also presented with other works by Vertov, both before and after his masterpiece - Kino-Eye (1924), Kino-Pravda #21 (1925), Enthusiasm: Symphony of the Donbass (1931) and Three Songs About Lenin (1934) - in this limited-edition 4-Disc Dual-Format edition. SPECIAL FEATURES including: Limited-edition 4-Disc Dual-Format New high-definition restored transfers of all five films Uncompressed PCM audio on all films Scores by The Alloy Orchestra for Man With A Movie Camera and Robert Israel for Kino-Eye New audio commentary on Man With A Movie Camera by film scholar Adrian Martin The Life and Times of Dziga Vertov, an exclusive, lengthy video interview with film scholar Ian Christie on Vertov's career and the films in this set 100-page limited edition book featuring the words of Dziga Vertov, archival imagery and more!

• Cinematic Orchestra: Man With A Movie Camera | DVD | (26/05/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  In 1929, Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertov made the groundbreaking Man With a Movie Camera documentary--a visual essay on life between the two world wars. Touching on poverty, sport and employment in Russia in the 1920s, Man With a Movie Camera was a masterpiece of silent filmmaking. There have been numerous soundtracks over the years that have attempted to provide Vertov's stunning images with the musical accompaniment they deserve, Michael Nyman minimalist take or Biosphere's electronica reading to name two. The Cinematic Orchestra have been using footage from the film for their live visuals and wrote a piece of the same name for their last album Every Day. They debuted their full soundtrack on the opening night of the Barbican's Only Connect season, augmenting their line up with a string section. The Cinematic Orchestra, as their name would suggest, can work detail and development into their compositions that reflect the mood of the film. The addition of a string section compliments the bands music, moving away from the jazz funk of their live sets towards something more powerful. Often fusion between the music and images work so well, you forget that the film remained without this soundtrack for 70-odd years. On the DVD: The Cinematic Orchestra extras include two live tracks, two videos ("All that you give" and "Man with a movie camera") plus a documentary entitled "From Reel To Reel". --Robert Smoughton

• The Man With A Movie Camera | DVD | (23/06/2008) from £13.15   |  Saving you £2.84 (17.80%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Re-release of Vertov's feature film produced by the Ukrainian film studio VUFKU presents urban life in Odessa and other Soviet cities. From dawn to dusk Soviet citizens are shown at work and at play and interacting with the machinery of modern life. It was Vertov's first full-length film and he used all the cinematic techniques at his disposal - dissolves split screen slow motion and freeze-frames - to produce a work that is exhilarating and intellectually brilliant. This version features a sound track by Michael Nyman.

• Michael Nyman's Man With A Movie Camera | DVD | (22/07/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  As you might guess from the rather impertinent possessive in the title, Michael Nyman's Man with a Movie Camera is a re-release of Dziga Vertov's 1929 experimentalist classic provided with a score by Michael Nyman. Those who know and love Nyman's music--and come to that, those who know and dislike it--will know pretty well what to expect: fluent orchestral minimalism turned out by the yard. The mood and the tempo scarcely vary, no matter what Vertov's showing us or how fast or slow the rhythm of his cutting. The effect is to tone down the excitement and audacity of Vertov's ideas and render them safe and even a touch bland. If you're a Nyman fan, this is definitely for you. Otherwise, the earlier BFI release of the same film has not one but two alternative scores: a pounding, heroic, forward-with-the-Soviets affair from the Alloy Orchestra, closely based on Vertov's own notes of the kind of orchestral accompaniment he wanted for his film; and a second from the progressive group In the Nursery, gentler and more expressionist, drawing on state-of-the-art music technology. (As a third option, the BFI release includes a well-informed voice-over commentary from film historian Yuri Tsivian.) On the DVD: Michael Nyman's Man with a Movie Camera comes to DVD packed in a hinged square metal tin reminiscent of the ones that hold small Dutch cigars. There are printed biogs of Vertov and Nyman, the latter rather cloyingly fulsome ("a man of impeccable musical credentials"). The transfer is excellent and pretty well complete; a few minor blemishes where the original nitrate stock had deteriorated scarcely detract. --Philip Kemp