TED'S DIGITAL JUNGLE #24 - DIGITAL DOCUMENTARY # 10 - VERTOV'S RELEVANCE TO THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION

IV.6. The Relevance of the Vertov Legacy to the Digital Revolution:

The Vertov legacy in documentary has been extensive, and is still growing today. 

For example, Vertov was the direct progenitor of the cinema verite movement in the 1960s that used new light-weight cameras and equipment to show the world in ways it had never been shown before, and the name cinema verite itself is a direct translation of Kino Pravda.   The influential French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard was also a great admirer of Vertov for his ability to fuse political statement with artistic creativity, and started La Groupe Dziga Vertov in 1968 with several collegaues to make political films following the example set by Vertov with Kino Pravda almost half a century earlier.[1]

His appeal is not limited to the French nouvelle vague and practitioners of cinema verite. Anyone seriously interested in the potential of cinema and cinematic language found useful ideas and observations in Vertov’s works and writings.

His Futurist faith in technology also resonates today.

 In addition to dynamic change, the Futurists adored modern technology, and Vertov worshipped the film camera and explored its potential in ways few have ever done. He took his Lumiere camera on trains, boats, cars and trains, and even underneath trains. He showed intimate moments of daily life in public places with hidden cameras, experimented with pixilation and reverse motion, and frequently had reflexive shots of his camera operator in action. [2]

His documentary feature, “The Man With The Movie Camera” is still admired as a creative masterpiece, and, most recently, was voted 8^th best film of all time in the 2012  Sight and Sound  poll.[3]

This poll included all film genres – fiction, as well as documentary. In the 21^st century, with an increased interest in documentary due to the rapid proliferation of digital technology, cinema historians are once again rediscovering the works and writings of Vertov; after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s  many of his films have become available to see on YouTube and elsewhere in the Western world, and English translations of his writings are also now available to the general public.

 Now, fortunately, people can judge his relevance for themselves, rather than relying on the interpretations of experts like Ivor Montagu and John Grierson.[4]

IV.7. Towards an Operational Definition of Documentary:

 Perhaps it is now time, with the sudden dominance of digital equipment, to once again resurrect the legacy of Dziga Vertov and the Cine-Eye aesthetic and see if it can provide criteria for creating an operational definition for documentary.  

The reasoning behind this stems from necessity, since defining documentary according to content, as many have done, is simply intellectually and logically impossible; as we have already seen, such a definition is based on completely subjective variables.

Likewise, any definition of documentary based on an assumption of the documentarians’ alleged or implicit intentions runs the risk of becoming mired in even more hopelessly subjective speculation.  Indeed, the contemporary debate between documentary theorists in the Anglophone academic world questioning the very rationale for documentary has created an intellectual cul-de-sac.

 For example, British post-modern documentary theorist Stella Bruzzi caps an incoherent intellectual broadside against fellow documentary theorists Linda Williams , Erik Barnouw, Michael Renov and Brian Winston with the following assertion:”all documentaries are inherently doomed to failure…Too often in the past documentary was seen to have failed (or to be in imminent danger of failing) because it could not be decontaminated of its representational quality.”[5]

There are fundamental flaws in Bruzzi’s  argument. First of all, she is unable to quote any documentarian saying that it is his or her creative goal to objectively represent reality, and therefore can present no empirical support for her thesis.  The reason for this is simple: there are no documentarians of note who have ever said such a thing.

Secondly, Bruzzi also asserts in this context that it is impossible for a documentarian to record a subject without the subject being unaware of the process. This statement is demonstrably untrue, and is even contradicted by the writings and work of Vertov, who frequently employed hidden camera techniques to catch his subjects “off guard. ”

In his Cine Eyes Field Manual, Vertov writes, ”Filming unawares – an old military rule; gauging, speed, attack”… Vertov then goes on to list 8 different ways in which the subject can be filmed unawares.[6]

A more contemporary example of a documentarian using a hidden camera can be also found in Danish Mads Brugger’s lively documentary The Ambassador (2012),[7] in which the director manages to purchase a position as an ambassador from Liberia to the Central African Republic to see if he can buy conflict diamonds. Much of the action involves interaction between the fake ambassador and local dignitaries – all recorded with hidden camera.

In other words, Bruzzi has based her argument on a demonstrably false premise.

As has been shown, the issue of documentary’s representation of reality has been an intellectual challenge to a generation of academic documentary theorists, who, in the words of historical documentary researcher Dirk Eitzen, have,” tended to devote their energies to showing how documentaries are constructed or artificial or ‘fictive’.” [8]

While not wishing to dispute the philosophical merits of this argument, Eitzen echoes the views of Patricia Aufderheide when he suggests that these documentary theorists might be better served if they considered the social impact on audiences of widely seen and well made historical documentaries such as Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (1985)[9] and Ken Burns’ Civil War (1990).[10]

Eitzen writes: “Philosophically speaking, reality and our representations of it are truly ‘incommensurate’. Practically speaking, however, documentarians do have the power to really put us in touch with our reality – just as “really”, that is, as our senses put us in touch with reality. We can never know reality, it is true, but we can very definitely know certain things about it. Evolution has guaranteed this.”[11]

 With the rapid growth of digital technology in documentary, notions of what is and what is not acceptable representation are changing as well. Therefore, it would perhaps be more practical to avoid altogether such highly charged issues such as what constitutes representation and what is the nature of reality when seeking a workable definition of documentary.  

If we are going to provide a clear and concise definition of what is, and what is not, documentary, we need to focus on how documentaries are made, rather than what they might or might not depict.

 In this context, in his seminal work on documentary production, “ Directing the Documentary”, Michael Rabiger observes that the debate regarding the identity of documentary has largely faded away among established filmmakers, adding that,” Except for women’s and gay political issues, academics have largely taken over the arguments. Little about the original debates has ever been settled, and the documentary remains a minefield of temptations and possibilities, just as in the early days... Documentary is a branch of the expressive arts, not a science.”[12]

 Jack C. Ellis and Betsy MacLane, authors of “ A New History of Documentary Film”, offer a similar response to documentary theorists like Bruzzi : “ However useful they may be for viewers seeking a deep understanding of the films, the writings of film theorists are not very much a part of the world of documentary making and watching.”[13]

A simpler methodology for defining documentary is offered by American media theorist James Monaco ; according to Monaco, cinematic styles concentrating on what is in front of the camera can be defined as realist; those cinematic styles with a focus on what goes on behind the camera he defines as expressionist. For illustrative purposes, he defines the Lumiere Brothers’s work as realist, and Melies’ work as expressionist.[14]

There is also significant support for such an approach in science. As Dr. Rudolf Carnap explains, Werner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle  has forced us to accept that we live in an indeterminate world, where there is never 100% certainty.  For example, there are phenomena which we know to exist, but which are too small or complex to measure accurately.[15]  Scientific phenomena that cannot be defined by their intrinsic essence, are sometimes defined according to how they are measured, in what are called correspondent or operational definitions.[16]

The British documentary theorist Dai Vaughan has summarized the essence of Vertov’s Theory as follows: “The cine-camera is endowed with all the potentialities of human sight – and more. It can peep with unblinking gaze into every corner of life, observing, selecting and capturing the myriad details of appearance and transaction  which constitute the reality of our epoch. The camera should, therefore, be used to record not the simulated emotions of paid actors in locales created by the plasterer and the set-decorator, but the authentic and unrehearsed behavior of real people in the streets and houses in which we live. All artifice should be eliminated, except in the unavoidable process of editing.”[17]

Let us now consider a possible operational definition of documentary based on what might be termed The Dziga Vertov Documentary Canon:

1)   DOCUMENTARY IS AN EXPRESSIVE CINEMATIC ART FORM WHICH CAN CONTAIN IMAGES OF ANYONE OR ANYTHING, BUT WHICH LOOKS AT THE UNIVERSE WITH A CRITICAL AND CREATIVE EYE.

2)   DOCUMENTARY CANNOT CONTAIN ANY STAGED OR DRAMATICALLY RE-CREATED VISUAL MATERIAL.  IF THERE IS SUCH MATERIAL, AND IT MUST BE USED OVERTLY. AUTHENTICITY CANNOT BE SUGGESTED WHEN THERE IS NONE.

In reality, few documentarians are absolute purists on this second point. As documentarians and all practitioners of cinematic craft know well, there are few absolutes in cinema; rather, one creates creative goals and then strives to achieve them as best one can. Fidelity alone to a given set of rules does not determine an artistic products success or failure. Indeed, the so-called failure may be far more interesting than the supposed success. Vertov himself admits he violated his own “rules” on more then one occasion.

Acordingly, this definition should be seen more as providing stylistic guidelines rather than laws etched in stone – along the lines of the Danish Dogme-95 Manifesto, which created an aesthetic without being doctrinaire.[18] What makes Vertov particularly intriguing as a paradigm for the creation of an operational definition of documentary is the dialectic between his theory and his practice – the interplay between his writings and his extensive body of work. His observations on documentary technique are very detailed, and appear to be refreshingly honest.  

For example, he himself confesses to some staging and manipulation in his work for practical production purposes , noting that the goal should be to keep such staging or manipulation to an absolute minimum.  However, as a documentary producer, Vertov was well aware that, when one has a job to do, one cannot always be an absolutist; unlike a critic, sometimes it is necessary for a film producer to compromise to get the job done.

Theoretical and ideological discussions aside, it is also worth remembering that Vertov’s  silent masterpiece, “The Man With The Movie Camera”  is still recognized as being so far ahead of its time in terms of documentary and cinematic techniques that some critics feel that it could could still serve as a manual in visual documentary techniques and aesthetics for future generations.[19]

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[1] Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/dziga.vertov)

[2] Link to “Kino Pravda, Parts 1-5”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QBKBij5_0c

[3] Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/dziga_vertov)

[4] Link to “The Man With the Movie Camera”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Fd_T4l2qaQ

[5] Stella Bruzzi ( New Documentary) Second Edition. Routledge, 2006, p. 6

[6] Hicks Iibid)p. 24

[7] Link to trailer for “The Ambassador”: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+ambassador+trailer&sm=1

[8] Dirk Eitzen (Against the Ivory Tower – An Apologia for ‘Popular’ Historical Documentaries) in Rosenthal and Corner( ibid), p. 417

[9] Link to Part 1 of “ Shoah”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XNIrrJe_7g

[10] Link to Part 1 of “ The Civil War”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN2huQB-DmE

[11] Eitzen (ibid.) P. 415

[12]  Rabiger (ibid).p 9

[13] Jack C. Ellis and Betsy  A. MacLane (  “ A New History of Documentary Film”) Continuum Press, 2006. P. 335

[14] James Monaco (How To Read a Film) Fourth Edition, Oxford University Press, 2009,p.318

[15] Rudolf Carnap (The Philosophical Foundations of Physics) Basic Books, 1966, p.283

[16] Carnap (ibid.)p.232

[17] From Dai Vaughan’s summary of Dziga Vertov’s Kino Eye Manifesto in Lewis Jacobs ( The Documentary Tradition) Second Edition, WW Norton, 1979, p.53

[18] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogme

[19] Hicks (ibid.) p.

TED'S DIGITAL JUNGLE#23 - DIGITAL DOCUMENTARY #10- DZIGA VERTOV AND DOCUMENTARY

IV.4. Dziga Vertov and Kino Eye:

 The stature of Flaherty’s contemporaries Dziga Vertov and his colleagues in the Soviet documentary movement has fared better in recent years, particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the discovery of previously inaccessible films and written materials. Indeed, when it comes to Western recognition of the historical and artistic importance of Dziga Vertov, his work, and his theories, there appears to be a major re-evaluation in progress today.

Why the importance of Vertov and his Kino Eye movement has been overlooked for so long by many Western documentary historians is a bit puzzling, particularly since Vertov’s contemporary and Soviet cinematic peer Sergei Eisenstein has long been the subject of adulation both as a filmmaker and theorist.

 A brief investigation reveals several possible explanations.

 The first explanation is simply ideological and political. Due to the economic dominance of the Anglophone world in the media world during the Twentieth Century, some Western cinema historians and critics ignored the quality and significance of the early Soviet documentary film in the development of documentary, dismissing the work of  Vertov and other Soviet artists as communist propaganda.

However, while Vertov was indisputably an enthusiastic creator of propaganda for the Soviet revolution, the same might also be said of Sergei Eisenstein. Since today both are widely recognized as great cinematic innovators, the answer must lie elsewhere.

Aside from their well documented creative differences, there was one significant difference between Eisenstein and Vertov: the role of Stalin. Stalin’s personal interest in the Soviet film industry has been well documented, and, for many years, Eisenstein enjoyed Stalin’s blessing and support, while Vertov, who had been a favorite of Lenin’s, most certainly did not.

Vertov had made many enemies in the 1920’s with his sweeping denunciations of dramatic cinema as a “bourgeois art form”, and the new climate gave his enemies a chance for revenge, and they took it. Vertov was soon subjected to  withering ideological attacks by the communist party hierarchy; interestingly, he himself was not a member of the party.

As a result, during the 1930’s, Eisenstein’s major films were accessible in the West, and Vertov’s generally were not. The same was true of their writings.  Since there was no Cold War between East and West in the 1930’s, the official approval of the Communist Party, not to mention Stalin himself, was doubtless a blessing among Western intellectuals, rather than the curse it was to later become.

 The lion’s share of the blame for this flagrant historical oversight must belong to John Grierson himself, who stubbornly refused to ever acknowledge any cinematic debt to Vertov and his Kino Eye Manifesto.

 “The record shows,” writes Jane M. Gaines,” that Grierson eschewed the Russians – was disinterested in Vertov and was not that deferential to Eisenstein. Basil Wright once said of Grierson that he ‘ never used the word revolution.”[1]

In other words, although Grierson seemingly shared the Soviet movement’s aesthetics and social engagement, he chose to downplay the relevance of Vertov’s theory and practice for his own documentary work. According to Russian cinema historian Jay Leyda, Grierson acknowledged only the famous Soviet feature director Sergei Eisenstein as an inspiration:” John Grierson’s work on the American version of “Potemkin” lends veracity to the story that the British documentary film movement was born from the last reel of “Potemkin”.[2]

 British film critic Ivor Montagu, a Grierson crony, handled the import of “The Man With the Movie Camera”, which was not shown in England until 1931.[3]

 We now know that the film was not popular in the ruling Stalinist circles; we also now know that that Montagu was, in fact, a Soviet spy during this period, so there are grounds for questioning Montagu’s real agenda .[4]

 After the first screenings in Paris and Stuttgart in 1929, Vertov’s film received very enthusiastic responses from prominent European intellectuals, including cinema historian Siegfried Kracauer, who wrote,” Now a new Russian film has arrived in Berlin that proves that the Russians have not remained stuck at the level they have already reached…If Vertov’s film is more than simply an isolated case, then it must be regarded as symptomatic of the inroads universal human categories have made in Russia’s rigid political thinking. [5]

In contrast, when “The Man With the Movie Camera” was finally shown in England in 1931, Montagu compared it unfavorably in print to the work of Eisenstein and Pudovkin, and criticized it for being stylistically derivative of “Berlin: Symphony of a Great City” (1927) by German Walter Ruttman. [6]

 Grierson’s own evaluation of the film in print was not flattering: “The Man With The Movie Camera,” he wrote,” is in consequence not a film at all; it is a snapshot album. There is no story, no dramatic structure, and no special revelation of the Moscow it has chosen as a subject. It just dithers about on the surface of life picking up shots here and there, and everywhere, slinging them together as the Dadaists used to sling together their verses, with an emphasis on the particular which is out of relation to rational existence.”[7]

 Grierson was thus able to summarily dismiss Vertov’s aesthetic and ideological significance, as well as the relevance of Kino Eye for the fledgling British documentary movement. As British cinema historian Jeremy Hicks noted recently,” For Grierson, Vertov’s film is all record, and no art. Therefore, in his terms, it is not documentary.”[8]

Whatever Grierson’s motives for his brusque rejection of a documentary now widely recognized as a masterpiece of world cinema, it is safe to say that this rejection served his interests in his own self-promotion as the founder of the documentary film genre. Indeed, his harsh treatment of Vertov’s work was reminiscent of his equally brutal denunciation of his former hero Robert Flaherty.

In cinematic terms, in eliminating all potential rivals, Grierson effectively had made himself the patriarch of documentary film for years to come. As a result, contemporary film historians such as the American Jack C. Ellis can still write,” It was Grierson who arrived at the concept of the documentary film as we think of it today; not to tell a story with actors but to deal with aspects of the real world that had some drama and perhaps some importance…”[9]

IV.5. Dziga Vertov’s Contribution to the Development of Documentary:

It is time for a serious re-evaluation of the relative roles played by Grierson and Vertov in the development of documentary.  As mentioned before, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the subsequent end of the Cold War, we now finally have access to more of the films and the original writings of Vertov and his contemporaries.  These films, along with his theoretical and practical writings provide proof that Vertov was developing a documentary aesthetic and style in the Soviet Union at least a decade before Grierson. Indeed, the Vertov documentary aesthetic and style have both withstood the test of time far better than either that of Flaherty or Grierson.

A brief look at Vertov’s professional career and achievements might be useful.

In 1918, a young man, then known as Denis Abel Kaufman, joined the newsreel department of the Moscow Cinema Committee, and, in an overt homage to the Futurist group led by the famous Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, he immediately changed his name to Dziga Vertov, meaning “ spinning gypsy.” He initially worked as an editor, churning out newsreels on the war between the Whites and the Reds, and developing his skills and style.

In 1919, he met Elizaveta Svilova, a colleague who became both his wife and his life-long creative collaborator as editor. In 1922, his brother Dennis joined him and became first cameraman. Inspired by the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda, Vertov developed his first original programs in 1922, the weekly Kino Pravda. What distinguishes the Kino Pravda from previous newsreels was the use of editorial themes rather the mere recording of events, and the use of creative editing to express those themes. [10] Artistic or poetic expression to convey political messages was accepted as the norm in writing and painting at the time, and Vertov extended this approach to film, even using Constructivist fonts for his intertitles.[11]

During this period, he also wrote two of his most well-known manifestos on the cinema: “We: Variant of a Manifesto” , and “Cine-Eyes: A Revolution”.[12]

These manifestos reveal an awareness of the need to unite Constructivist theory with the rapidly developing practice of film montage to convey a message and a story.  Vertov and his wife Elizaveta were soon arguably the world’s first documentary editors. In the process, Vertov was quickly learning what worked and what did not. For example, he soon understood that politically stage-managed events were not cinematically interesting. In his instructions to his cameramen, he wrote,” Temporarily avoid photographing parades and funerals (we’ve had enough of them and they’re boring) and recordings of meetings with an endless succession of orators ( cannot be conveyed on the screen)[13]”

While most contemporary documentarians would agree with Vertov’s opinion on the soporific quality of filmed parades, Vertov’s dislike for artifice went much further; he regularly denounced all dramatic film as “theatrical” and therefore “ bourgeois” – and, therefore, by implication, counter-revolutionary.

In the Soviet Union of the 1920’s calling or even implying that someone was a counter-revolutionary was a serious charge; by doing so, Vertov made many enemies among his colleagues, including most notably, Sergei Eisenstein. This alienation of colleagues was to subsequently cost Vertov dearly, as shall be been

Be that as it may,  Vertov’s theoretical documentary concept of Kino- Eye (Cinema-Eye) has been adopted by subsequent generations of socially engaged documentarians inspired by statements like this one, delivered at a Vertov lecture in Paris in 1929: ‘The history of Cinema Eye has been a relentless struggle to modify the course of world cinema, to achieve in cinema a new emphasis on the unplayed film over the played film, to substitute the document for the mise--scene, to break out of the proscenium of the theater and to enter the arena of life itself.”[14]

In terms of current documentary technique, there can be little doubt that, in terms of camerawork, editing and his pioneering concept of visual literacy, Vertov was decades ahead of both Flaherty and Grierson.  His body of work, ranging from silent features like “One Sixth of the World” (1926), “The Eleventh Year “(1928), [15]and the previously mentioned “The Man With the Movie Camera” (1929), are all widely recognized today as examples of cinema craft and artistry.

Dziga Vertov also succeeded in making a seamless transition to sound more successfully than most of his peers. His sound features “Enthusiasm: Symphony of the Donbas” (1931) and “Three Songs of Lenin “( 1934)  are also appreciated today for their creative use of music, location recorded sound and interviews at a time when many others were content to merely record a talking head.[16]

Ironically, it was Vertov’s very dedication to the development of the documentary language and form that got him into ideological trouble as Stalinization of the Soviet arts scene ushered in an aesthetically regressive period in the late 1920’s.

For Russian Futurists like Vertov, Mayakovsky, and author Yevgeny Zamyatin, inability to change led to biological entropy, which, in turn, eventually to the death of the biological system. This Futurist philosophy helped make them enthusiastic supporters of the Communist Party and the Russian Revolution in its early stages; however, after Lenin’s death in 1924, however, the same worship of change set them on a collision course with Stalin and his supporters, since Stalin’s priority was consolidation of power with an absolute minimum of change – in short, the very state of cultural entropy the Futurists abhorred.

Like Lenin, Stalin took a great interest in the Soviet film industry. However, it was soon clear though his recorded comments that he did not like documentary in general. There were several reasons for this dislike.

First of all, Stalin wanted to create a cult of personality around himself; unstaged documentary portrayals of him would be far too revealing and intimate, and not project the iconic image he desired. As a result, Stalin soon realized that it was far more effective propaganda if he were portrayed by a suitably attractive actor in a well  scripted fiction film with a carefully tailored message.

There was also the cost factor; documentary productions had an unavoidably high shooting ratio, often of 20:1 or more, and were therefore expensive to produce. To make matters even worse, quality film stock was hard to find in the Soviet Union. A well -scripted fiction film, on the other hand, might have a shooting ratio of as low as 2:1. The communist party finally reached the conclusion that the only value of any film was its ideological content and all other aesthetic considerations were, at best, secondary, if not completely irrelevant.   All documentary production was to be terminated.

 In this context, it is a bit ironic that the Soviets’ bitter ideological rivals, the National Socialists of Germany, reached very similar conclusions regarding their own propaganda efforts. While Leni Riefenstalhl’s controversial films “Triumph of The Will” (1934) and “Olympiad “(1938) achieved international acclaim for their extraordinary cinematic quality , the Nazi leadership ultimately decided to focus on commercial entertainment cinema as their primary vehicle for propaganda.

In Germany, with the domestic Agfa factory producing quality film stock, it appears that cost was not an issue; it seems that both Hitler and Goebbels, like Stalin, were also big fans of Hollywood, and they all seemed to agree that the ideal vehicle for propaganda and communicating political messages to the general population was the fiction entertainment film, rather than documentary.

In retrospect, they were all correct; today, most communicators agree that the political message in an entertainment film like “ Casablanca” is far more effectively delivered than any documentary could do.

In the Soviet Union, it was sadly predictable that, by 1931, documentarians like Vertov were being referred to by the pejorative term documentalists , and that obedient communist party ideologues called for the complete destruction of documentalism, which was accused of being both “Formalist” and “Trotskyist”, which were  potentially fatal epithets in those days.

 Undaunted,  Vertov made a brave defense of his documentary aesthetics in his essay “On Documentary and Documentalists” (1931):

“Question: What is the difference between newsreel, Cine-Eye, documentary and unplayed film?

Answer: There is no difference. These are different definitions of one and the same branch of cinema production: it is ‘newsreel’, which points to its continuous link with the accumulation of the current material of newsreel; it is Cine-Eye, which points to the recording of this newsreel material armed with the cine-camera, the Cine-Eye; it is documentary, which points to it being genuine, to the authenticity of the accumulated material; it is unplayed, which points to actors being unnecessary, to acting being unnecessary in the production of this kind of film.”[17]

Vertov’s last major work was “Three Songs of Lenin” (1934), ostensibly an homage to the legacy of Lenin using 3 different musical movements;  an homage to Lenin doubtless provided stout ideological camouflage, and Vertov somehow managed to make the first song  a very powerful statement celebrating the demise of chador, or the veil, in the new Soviet republics to the South, which were predominantly Muslim.

Apparently, the film was not well received by the party hierarchy; Stalin objected to the portrayal of Lenin for some vague ideological discrepancy, and few dared to question Stalin’s authority on ideological matters; in retrospect, it seems likely that Stalin’s real objection was that there was way too much Lenin in the film, and nowhere near enough Stalin.

There was now blood in the water, and all of Vertov’s many old ideological and aesthetic enemies saw their opportunity to get their revenge on their former critic, and  even former colleagues and supports like   Sergei Eisenstein joined the party chorus to denounce Vertov for having ‘ formalist and documentalist tendencies”.  

The greatest Soviet documentarian was forced to return to where he began - producing pedestrian newsreels until his death in 1954.[18]

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[1] Gaines (bid)p. 86

[2] Jay Leyda( Kino: A History of the Russian and Soviet Film) Third Edition, Princeton University Press, 1983, p.195

[3] Jeremy Hicks (Dziga Vertov – Defining Documentary Film) I.B. Taurus, 2007. pp.123-124

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivor_Montagu

[5] Yuri Tsivian, (Lines of Resistance- Dziga Vertov and the Twenties)2004, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, pp358-359

[6]  A link to “The Man with the Movie Camera”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Fd_T4l2qaQ

[7] John Grierson, The Clarion, Vol. 3, no. 2, February 1931. From Tsivian ( ibid), p. 374

[8] Hicks ( ibid),p.124

[9] Ellis and MacLane ( ibid) p. ix

[10] Links to episodes 1-5 of “Kino Pravda”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QBKBij5_0c

[11] Hicks ( ibid) p.14

[12] Hicks ( ibid) p.14

[13] Dziga Vertov (On the Significance of Non-Acted Cinema) 1923, in Kino-Eye, p. 51; from Hicks ( ibid) p.15

[14] Barnouw (ibid) p. 61

[15] Link to “The Eleventh Year”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3csHcuiuTv8

[16] Link to “Enthusiam- Sounds of Donbas”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBLZzk6pp0M

[17] Dziga Vertov (RGALI 2091/2/174), from Hicks, ( ibid),p.84

[18] Barnouw (ibid) p.65