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Poll

What's your favorite film by Dziga Vertov?

Kino-pravda series
0 (0%)
Kino Eye
0 (0%)
Man with the Movie Camera
11 (68.8%)
Entuziazm: Simfoniya Donbassa
1 (6.3%)
Three Songs of Lenin
0 (0%)
other (specify)
0 (0%)
haven't seen any
4 (25%)
don't like any
0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 16

Author Topic: Vertov, Dziga  (Read 2453 times)

pixote

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Re: Vertov, Dziga
« Reply #10 on: October 05, 2017, 09:55:00 PM »
Enthusiasm  (Dziga Vertov, 1931)
Not a good film to watch when tired; nor a good film to watch directly in the shadow of Man with a Movie Camera. I evidently agree with Vertov himself that this feels like an ambitious rough draft of an incomplete vision. It's plays (anachronistically) like a warmup to Man with a Movie Camera except in its use of sound, which carries with it a great deal of promise but not enough realized success. The clarity of vision of the earlier film is absent here. Enthusiasm, despite a good number of wonderful images and inspired sonic juxtapositions ultimately feels thrown together and unpolished.
Grade: C

Three Songs of Lenin  (Dziga Vertov, 1934)
The importance of the lack of interittles in Vertov's other films becomes pronounced here, as their presence repeatedly ruins the flow of the images, triggering my mind to wander off and ponder other things. When the film finds a rhythm and maintains its poetic propaganda, it can be quite beautiful — specifically, the end of the second song and the start of the third (which seemed to recycle some images from Enthusiasm). As a modern viewer removed from the historical context, the "ode" to Lenin elements are downright annoying, but I still concede this might have been effective propaganda at the right time and place. I could put together a hundred screenshots from this film that would inspire you to rush to see it — but that'd be misleading. The images are better than the film as a whole.
Grade: C-

Kino Eye  (Dziga Vertov, 1924)
A nice precursor to Man with a Movie Camera, less polished but still alive with giddiness at cinema's possibilities. Vertov, true to his name, has a lot of fun turning time around and following processes from the end back to the beginning. The film's strongest asset, though, might be its unflinching look at some darker aspects of city life, like homelessness, drug addiction, and mental health problems. He's got such a wonderful appreciation of faces.
Grade: B-

Kino-pravda no. 21 – Lenin Kino-Pravda. A Film Poem about Lenin  (Dziga Vertov, 1925)
Lenin makes vertov boring.
Grade: C-

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Knocked Out Loaded

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Re: Vertov, Dziga
« Reply #11 on: October 14, 2017, 10:30:26 AM »
Man With The Movie Camera, 90˚
Enthusiasm, 35˚
Three Songs About Lenin, 30˚
Kino-pravda no. 15, 23; 25˚
« Last Edit: October 22, 2019, 02:50:16 AM by Knocked Out Loaded »
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Re: Vertov, Dziga
« Reply #12 on: August 25, 2019, 10:58:56 PM »
1. Man with a Movie Camera
2. Kino Eye
3. Enthusiasm
4. Kino-pravda series
5. The Sixth Part of the World