Videojournalism Eye -hommage to Dziga Vertov

To cinephiles and documentary makers, Vertov is synonymous with Shakespeare, inside film.

His Kino-eye Man with a Movie Camera (1929) is an epochal piece of work. It’s informed and continues to impact modern works.

Much of what Vertov has done for film and docs is staggering, but what about today’s equivalent auteurs whose significance could be framed around the prescience of creating a piece of work that experiments with the future?

Vertov is many things, and his form’s embrace is indicative of this: experimenter, documentary maker, poet, journalist, visionary. He provided a film that became a template for an interdisciplinary group of people to be inspired and study.

Cinema verite practitioners in Jean Rouch, and his American equivalence in Robert Drew all benefited. Vertov’s work was a selfless act in helping future generations realise the power of film, when film and documentary were in their infancy.

But if you believe everything atrophies, nothing stays the same, that culture and the future are shaped and reframed by newer generations, who is the Vertov giving a free lesson in how cognitively film will work its practitioners, and make audience take note.

This thought emerges from reading Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday: memoirs of a European. Stefan identifies in Vienna at the turn of the century this great push that he and friends were experiencing that was leaving a generation behind. It was a fertile period, from which many art forms were being birthed as in film, or re-birthed as in literature, drama, painting, journalism etc.

Video journalism and cinema journalism owe a deep debt into the style and sense making, but where is the auteur/ teacher, who is showing us tomorrow?

Vertov today
Back to Vertov. The film starts with the bold title, this is an experiment and the statement it will be free of the use of inter titles, which held cinema together in the soundless days.

The film is many things, but for me it’s an Encyclopedia in the language of (meda-video) videojournalism revealing a number of processes.

• Filming technique
• Film language
• Position of the cameraman, Vertov’s brother, whilst shooting.
• Effects
• A compendium for modern films.

Though free of narrative, it’s possible to construct one. The films shows up somewhat embarrassingly for our videojouralism times what was achieved in 1929.

Claymation effects, Freeze-frame film as photos; symbolism in video making as a merry go round and wall of death rider interchange shots.

The inter cut between mechanisation, against the ordinariness of daily life (shaving and washing) a baby pushing out from his mothers; and a fair smattering of nudity — soft flesh -Vertov knew what sells.

Vertov knew what was going to sell: films of social purpose. In those days the expense of it all meant docs were reserved for big themed subjects. Housing Problems — Griersonian docs came 6 years later.

The cascading score (not the one playing but the notes he left for composers) set against a game of football is mesmerizing. We get the obligatory behind-the-lines shots, though much cleaner than today’s in-the-heavens depiction, and then some tantalising images on the pitch.

Why can’t videojournalism’s be allowed to film on the field of play whilst Manchester United play Arsenal? Yes it’s an absurd thought you might ask, but then why not fix the ref with a head cam, which gives the viewer access to the pitch.

Vertov videojournalism next
That’s what Vertov’s film is begging us to think.

Then there is the pure poetry of the athletes, high jumping; hurdling, hammer throwing. Women in full grace, men exuding brute strength.

The shots have been slowed down in superslowmo. 1000 frames a second, who knows, but its genius to watch.

Vertov or Kaufman tags his shots ala 24; he hollywoodises his language: shot/reverse/shot.

He hangs off a moving train, and captures the belly of a fast-moving one. You see the mound Kaufman builds to provide the shot. All the while having to handcrank the camera, which in those days lacked electronic motors and was barely entertaining spring-based wound up mechanisms.

Its superb because if you follow the timeline of what he achieved back then working under strenuous conditions (Directors thought him pretentious etc) it deserves to be shown to all vjs, with the caveat — now what would you do?

A favourite repetitive scene for me is watching Kaufman lug his camera and sticks around. The weight of that camera and tripod, hardly mobile, must have been something.

This zoo- approach to film making, which often unveils the artefacts of film making, with the cameraman, soundman in shot, is much used today. Back then he would have been further criticised for dispelling the illusion of film making, much as News makers continue that three-card trick today.

Man with a Movie Camera continues its relevance, but for a new generation.

Perhaps it’s not so much aping the compendium of his shot list, but providing a new lingua-aesthetic. One in which the psychology of shot juxtaposition, rather than sequence — which often gets lost in translation — is given priority — if not in affective experimental film but also visual narrative driven videojournalism (meta-video) essays.