Man with a Movie Camera / Liudyna z kinoaparatom

Man With a Movie Camera is one of the major manifestos of the global cinema avant-garde. In accordance with the aesthetic principles of Dziga Vertov, the film was shot without a script.

In the documentary Man with a Movie Camera, Vertov included experiments he had been conducting for many years as well as theoretical groundwork in camerawork and montage, turning the film into a methodological manual for future generations of directors. The lens of the talented cameraman Mykhail Kaufman captures the colorful life of the Ukrainian megalopolises of Odesa, Kharkiv, and Kyiv under the New Economic Policy.

The film was shot as a chronicle of one day in the life of a big city, recorded with a camera “cine eye”. The idea of the film belongs to Mikhail Kaufman, the cameraman and the director’s brother. He suggested that Vertov should create a ‘cameraman’s diary’. This film ended up being the last joint project of this creative and talented team.

Vertov expressed his creative intentions for the film in this quote: ‘This experimental work is aimed at creating a true international pure/complete film language based on its complete separation from the language of the theater and literature.’