Abstract
This chapter leaps ahead in time from Vertov’s early-career definitional attempt (see Chap. 8, 1922) to his second definitional attempt examined in this volume: his 1928 introduction of the neologism “Life-As-It-Is.” Placing Vertov’s attempt to locate Documentary in a much larger philosophical and historical context reveals that, by that year, he was deeply involved in the production of a film that would become his magnum opus: The Man with the Movie Camera (1929). His theorization and conceptualization of Documentary and his growing film output was, in any case, at its zenith. Documentary was not merely a method of production, a mode of persuasion, a means of manifesting truths “of-and-about life” and “of-and-about-reality,” but instead, quite overwhelmingly, a comprehensive mode of perceiving and understanding the world (Weltanschauung). In this discussion I shed light on the fact that throughout his life and work, Vertov demonstrated his susceptibility to idealistic modes of thinking circulated by thinkers such as Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, and Schopenhauer, thinkers who collectively dominated nineteenth-century philosophy. In this light, “Life-As-It-Is” becomes a bridge that Vertov constructs between, on the one hand, idealism, and on the other, realism.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
“life, n.” Oxford University Press, 2019. For more about “Naïve realism,” see I. Aitken (2006, 1096–1103).
- 2.
Annette Michelson, “Introduction,” in Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, ed. Annette Michelson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), xxv.
- 3.
Vertov (1984 [1923], 35–38).
- 4.
This assertion is further developed in his concept of “Film Thing.”
- 5.
- 6.
Petric (1987, 119).
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
Vertov (1984 [1937], 186).
- 10.
- 11.
Papazian (2009).
- 12.
Vertov’s ten Documentary dictates are: (1) bigger-than-life events; (2) destruction by a smaller camera; (3) multiplication of angles for a given filmed moment; (4) candid camera; (5) educating people not to act but to be themselves in front of the camera; (6) making the camera part of the scene by preceding presence; (7) emphasizing the direct gaze of the film subject into the lens as a means of exposing their awareness of the filming subject, the audience, and what Vertov termed “the film thing”; (8) using telescopic lenses instead of intruding near a sensitive occurrence; (9) reflexivity: filming the filming-subject; and (10) filming life unawares: the subject’s self-immersing in the haste of the present.
- 13.
In Geva (2017, 305–324).
- 14.
Vertov (1984 [1926], 66).
- 15.
Petric (1987, 4).
Works Cited and Further Reading
Aitken, Ian. 2006. Realism, Philosophy, and the Documentary Film. In Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film, ed. I. Aitken, 1096–1103. New York and London: Routledge.
Geva, Dan. 2017. Reinvisioning Dziga Vertov: Ten Enduring Diktats for Documentary Cinema. In The Philosophy of Documentary Film, ed. David LaRocca, 305–325. New York: Lexington Books.
Hicks, Jeremy. Dziga Vertov: Defining Documentary Film. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2007. “life, n.” Oxford University Press, 2019.
Michelson, Annette. 1984 [1924]. Introduction. In Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Papazian, Elizabeth Astrid. 2009. Manufacturing Truth: The Documentary Moment in Early Soviet Culture. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press.
Petric, Vlada. 1987. Constructivism in Film. The Man with the Movie Camera: A Cinematic Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Roberts, Graham. 2000. In The Man with the Movie Camera. The Russian Cinema Series, ed. Richard Taylor. London: I.B. Tauris.
Sadoul, Georges. 1963. Dziga Vertov. Artsept 2: 1.
Taylor, Richard, and Ian Christie, eds. 1994. The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents 1896–1939. London and New York: Routledge.
Tsivian, Yuri, ed. 2004. Lines of Resistance: Dziga Vertov and the Twenties. Pordenone, Italy: Le Giornate del Cinema Muto.
Vertov, Dziga. “We: Variant of a Manifesto.” In Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, ed. Annette Michelson. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984 [1922].
———. “On the Significance of Nonacted Cinema.” In Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, ed. Annette Michelson, 35–38. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984 [1923].
———. “The Birth of Kino-Eye.” In Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, ed. Annette Michelson, 40–42. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984 [1924].
———. “Kino-Eye.” In Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, ed. Annette Michelson, 60–79. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984 [1926].
———. “The Man with the Movie Camera (Чeлoвeк C Кинoaппapaтом/Chelovek S Kinoapparatom),” 66. USSR, 1929a.
———. “From Kino-Eye to Radio-Eye.” In Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, ed. Annette Michelson. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984 [1929b].
———. “My Latest Experiment.” In Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, ed. Annette Michelson, 132–137. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984 [1935].
———. “On Mayakovsky.” In Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, ed. Annette Michelson, 180–181. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984 [1937].
———. “More on Mayakovsky.” In Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, ed. Annette Michelson, 182–187. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984 [1937].
Williams, Alan. 1979. The Camera-Eye and the Film: Notes on Vertov’s Formalism. Wide Angle 3 (3): 12–17.
Zaurabichvili, François. 2000. The Eye of Montage. In The Brain Is the Screen: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Cinema, ed. G. Flaxman, 141–149. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Geva, D. (2021). 1928: Dziga Vertov. In: A Philosophical History of Documentary, 1895–1959. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79466-8_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79466-8_13
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-79465-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-79466-8
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)