Dziga Vertov : defining documentary film / Jeremy Hicks.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hicks, Jeremy.

Series:

KINO, the Russian cinema series

KINO: the Russian cinema series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Vertov, Dziga, 1896-1954--Criticism and interpretation.

Vertov, Dziga.

Vertov, Dziga, 1896-1954.

Motion picture producers and directors--Soviet Union.

Motion picture producers and directors.

Documentary films--Soviet Union--History and criticism.

Documentary films.

Criticism and interpretation.

Soviet Union.

Physical Description:

xi, 194 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : I. B. Tauris, 2007.

Summary:

Pioneer of political documentary and inventor of cinema verite, Dziga Vertov has exerted a decisive influence on directors from Eisenstein to Godard. Yet his reputation long rested upon a lone masterpiece, Man with a Movie Camera. Recently, however, Vertov has begun to be recognised as the creator of a body of innovative and distinct films. This, the first book in English to cover the whole of Vertov's career, reveals him to be an auteur, allowing readers to combine the familiar and less familiar aspects of his filmmaking and thinking in a cohesive narrative.

Jeremy Hicks demonstrates how Vertov draws on Soviet journalistic models for his transformation of newsreel into the new form of documentary film. Through analyses of Cine-Pravda No 21 (Leninist Cine-Pravda), Cine-Eye, Forward Soviet!, A Sixth Part of the World, The Eleventh Year, Man with a Movie Camera, Enthusiasm, Three Songs of Lenin and Lullaby, he shows how Vertov's greatest works combine authentic documentary footage ingeniously for tremendous rhetorical effect. The director's current reputation is in sharp counterpoint to the way his films were received in Russia: in the 1920s the sheer novelty of the documentary genre meant his work was little understood and much criticised, and in the 1930s Vertov was marginalised.

Documentary as we know it today is unthinkable without the rediscovery of Vertov in the 1960s. In an age more suspicious of documentary's implicit claims to objectivity, Vertov's reflexive and overtly partisan films are of even greater relevance, but need to be better known and understood. This is the purpose of Dziga Vertov: Defining Documentary Film.

Contents:

Introduction: Dziga Vertov - Defining Documentary Film 1

1 The Birth of Documentary from the Spirit of Journalism: Cine-Pravda, Cine-Eye 5

2 Vertov and Documentary Theory: The Goal Was Truth, the Means Cine-Eye' 22

3 'A Card Catalogue in the Gutter.' Forward, Soviet!, A Sixth Part of the World 39

4 New Paths: The Eleventh Year, Man with a Movie Camera 55

5 Sound and the Defence of Documentary: Enthusiasm 71

6 Documentary or Hagiography? Three Songs of Lenin 90

7 Years of Sound and Silence: Lullaby 106

8 Forward Dziga! Foreign and Posthumous Reception 123.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 171-177) and index.

ISBN:

9781845113766

1845113764

1845113772

9781845113773

OCLC:

72868798