Maiakovskiene - and Vertov (Three Songs about Lenin)

Партия и Ленин -
                 близнецы-братья
кто более
          матери-истории ценен?
Мы говорим Ленин,
                  подразумеваем -
                                  партия,
мы говорим
           партия,
                   подразумеваем -
                                   Ленин.

(Маяковский, Владимир Ильич Ленин)

Partidul şi Lenin - fraţi gemeni
Istoria Mamă-i socoate asemeni
Iar noi spunând: Lenin - partidul numim,
Partidul când spunem - la Lenin gândim
(Maiakovski, Vladimir Ilici Lenin)

Три песни о Ленине, 1934
(source: NoNaMe)
no copyright infringement intended

Ленин жил, Ленин жив, Ленин будет жить (Lenin has lived, is living, will live): the above poster summarizes this movie. The atheist society of Stalin needed its own mythology, just as throughout the whole history any other society had to build its own mythology (a fiction is always essential in the struggle for survival; if Darwin hadn't told it from the very beginning, it was said anyway by lots of Darwinians). Ultimately any mythology supposes the existence of an eternal god. Of course, in the Soviet mythology the eternal god was Lenin. As he had died in 1924, the problem of his immortality had to be solved.

In this movie the god Lenin lives forever in the Soviet society: in the whole society, and in any particle of it. Any Soviet citizen, and any Soviet accomplishment, carries the personality of Lenin. With this movie Vertov gives up his atheism, to become a pantheist: he deifies the Soviet society because it embodies the eternity of Lenin, and he deifies Lenin because his eternity is embodied in the Soviet society. Is it pantheism or rather panentheism? I'd leave for you to decide. Anyway it is the demonstration of a perfect totalitarian system: one cannot have free will as everyone embodies Lenin, thus carrying the will of Lenin.

Три песни о Ленине, 1934
(source: NoNaMe)
no copyright infringement intended

Well, for the regime officials this movie had two impardonable flaws. Firstly it was an Avangardist movie, it means some kind of bourgeois leisure. In 1934 the Soviet norm was already the Socialist Realism. And more than that it was the second flaw. The Soviet mythology was actually built upon two gods: one dead (Lenin) and one alive and in full control of the power (Stalin). And the dead god should have had only one role: to justify the almighty alive god.  This movie said too much about the dead god, and almost nothing about the alive god. No wonder that Vertov would not be let to make another movie any more. He would not understand why, as he was too honest, too sincere, to understand the ways of life.

Apart from that, this is a superb movie, just because it is so consistently Avangardist (I would even say so Productionist - the whole Soviet construction living through one hero, Lenin), and so sincere.

Три песни о Ленине, 1934
(video by solidaritet2010)

(Dziga Vertov)

(Majakovsky)

Dziga Vertov, Enthusiasm, 1931

Энтузиазм: Цимфония Донбасса, 1931
(source: vimeo)
no copyright infringement intended

The first sound film of Dziga Vertov, this is a tribute to the first Soviet 5 year plan, opening with the forcible transformation of churches to social and political clubs, filming work in the coal mines of the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine, capturing the sights and sounds of steel and locomotive works, and finishing with some scenes of harvests in the Ukraine countryside. Most of the focus is on work and the potential glories of the new Soviet citizens who promise to exceed the quotas of the five year plan. This is a marvel mostly because of Vertov's mastery of the early sound technology which required cameras that weighed over a ton. With speeches and inter-titles shifting between Ukrainian and Russian, there is no narrative, no actors, no script and only some visual references to Eisenstein's fictional works. It is easy to see why this film was more praised outside of the Soviet Union than inside and why so few of the workers filmed had any interest in watching it.

(maple-2 on imdb)

The movie is subtitled Symphony of the Donbass and portrays the implementation of the first five year plan in the industrial regions of Ukraine. If that sounds unexciting, don't be put off – this is an amazing movie that places sound – the sounds of pulleys and railway wagons, steel plants, the brass bands of the Young Pioneers and the Army, of tractors in the Kolkhoz – at the forefront of everything. Framed by close-up shots of a young women (later shown to be an artist making the finishing touches to a bust of Lenin) listening to the radio via earphones, the soundtrack of the film takes on a life of its own. Its synchronization with the visual content of the film creates a highly atmospheric portrayal of work and of constant, excessive noise – not just the noise of the work itself but of the streets, with their endless parades and ubiquitous brass bands.

(Balbec4 on imdb)

(With Enthusiasm) Vertov undertook a suicidal double challenge – to make a political film that would both show (with image and montage) and song (with sound taken from nature and machine) the heroic, dramatic struggles of the state to industrialize at any cost – while pioneering the use of untested sound recording in the field. The finished film was received with derision and incomprehension.He believed that a decisive, poetic work made of pieces of life caught red-handed may reverse the tide not only of the history of cinema, but of Soviet Reality itself. How could he not see what was happening around him? Simple, he was always looking through his camera and at his strips of film. He never trusted his poor human eyes, anyway. He was wrong: the cinema’s most beautiful loser.

(Carloss James Chamberlin in Senses of Cinema)

Энтузиазм: Цимфония Донбасса, 1931
(video by Κίτσος Βέλιουρας)

Some see Vertov's Enthusiasm as a masterpiece. Many others consider it a failure. I think that even as a failure Enthusiasm is a great experiment, one of the greatest in cinema history. It was Vertov's first sound film. And he tried with the soundtrack to do the impossible. In Человек с Киноаппаратом, the camera had been the main actor (maybe the only actor), constructing the film in front of the spectators' eyes. Here in Энтузиазм, the sound was the only actor, controlling an insane counterpoint of ballets on industrial themes, radio and railroad infrastructure, political meetings, huge demonstrations, coal exploitation, steelmaking, kolkhoz with tractors and stuff; all these seamlessly metamorphosing one into another, becoming the avatars of a unique reality. And as a symbol of sound supremacy, the power of the radio.

This movie is a perfect demonstration of конструктивизм: the old culture (religion and alcohol - here Vertov was the most orthodox avant-gardist) replaced by a new culture, where the art (of course, Constructivist) is generating the whole new society: policies, infrastructure, industry, agriculture, and above all, Stalinist enthusiasm. A huge difference from the actual reality, which also meant forced labor, Голодомо́р, repressions (even one of the political leaders of the epoch, showed in the movie at a demonstration, Stanislav Kosian, the infamous organizer of the Ukrainian famine in the thirties, would become himself a victim of the Stalinist purges, in 1939). Carloss James Chamberlin is right: Vertov believed in his own reality, based on his filmic montage, always looking through his camera and at his strips of film. But that's the way the history goes, with the Avant-garde of the cinema: all of them, Eisenstein and Vertov among others (and also Riefenstahl by the way, on the other side) were politically very committed.

And as an irony of history this ultra-Communist film was not agreed by the Soviet officials either: the epoch of Socialist Realism was beginning, and Constructivist art had become to be viewed as a bit too formal, a bit too decadent, definitely too unhealthy, in one word too bourgeois. Sic transit gloria mundi.



(Dziga Vertov)

Study # 7 again: Nancarrow and Vertov

I'm coming to Nancarrow's Study # 7 again: here is a video where this study is coring images from one of the greatest movies ever, Человек с Киноаппаратом of Vertov. I will talk about this movie sometime, it is a joy for the eye.

Study # 7 for player piano and Man with a Camera(video

(Conlon Nancarrow)

(Dziga Vertov)

Dziga Vertov in New York

In the camera's eye a day passes within earshot of eternity, was Dziga Vertov saying in 1922.

(video by grandma3000)

The title is confusing; this 8 minute indie is written, directed, cinematographed, edited and produced, all in one, by Cameron Pearson. It's a tribute to Dziga Vertov, and by times you feel it's the Russian behind the camera. The same freshness, the same joyous taste for making details relevant. The people in the movie are the humble ones from New York, those struggling with poverty, yet there is a joyfulness in their attitude, an optimism, and here you feel again Vertov. It's also a tribute to Jacob Riis: you should read his bio in Wikipedia, it's astonishing. I would post some more photos made by him, here I give you only one, the most famous:

Bandit's Roost at 591/2 Mulberry Street, 1888

(Cameron Pearson)

(New York, New York)

(Dziga Vertov)

Remastering a Masterpiece

Zsigmond is a student in Budapest, passionate about remastering great movies. Here is one of his videos: it is a study on Man with a Camera, the masterpiece of Vertov. The video was kept deliberately mute. Image from the movie of Vertov is joined by its corresponding image built by Zsigmond. The movie of Vertov was black and white. The corresponding images are color.

(video by zsigmondp)

The result is touching, a great tribute to the master.

(Dziga Vertov)

Dziga Vertov: Kino-Glaz

Кино-Глаз (Kino-Eye), made by Dziga Vertov in 1924, announces already his masterpiece, the Man with a Camera. Of course, it's far from the great perfection of the latter, it's much more agit-prop, and so on; but it has the same alertness, the same freshness and optimism, the same great eye for making a detail relevant (the doggy that is seen just a second near the table of drinkers). And the same courage to experiment: here in Kino-Glaz it's about the reverse shooting.

(video by webtoledo)

This video makes a synthesis of the whole: the movie is 78 minutes long. A documentary centered on a group of Pioneers (the Communist version of Boy-Scouts): their enthusiastic activities link together various short sequences, edited forward and backward, just to sustain a lesson of Marxist political economy. Look what Yuri Tsivian has to say about, in his monumental study of Vertov's art (included in Masterpieces of Modernist Cinema, editor Ted Perry):

Why is shopping at the Red Supermarket better than buying the same piece of meat at the market? This has something to do with its quality, or sanitary control, or prices, our consumer instinct prompts us. Wrong answer. The true nature of meat, as of any commodity (Marx dixit, and Vertov believes it), is defined not by qualities inherent in the end product, but by the character of labor involved in its production.

And the enthusiastic Vertov makes the demonstration by using his experiments in reverse editing, taking the packages of beef meat and going back to the slaughterhouse, putting the entrails back to the bull, skinning him, bringing him back to life, and carrying him back by railroad to his herds.


(Dziga Vertov)

Dziga Vertov

I will start a series about Dziga Vertov with an animation made by him in 1924: Советские игрушки (Soviet Toys). It is a perfect example of Constructivist movie, and as any Constructivist artwork it is doing Communist propaganda: the avantgarde of the 20's, totally committed politically; they were viewing their art as a basis for the creation of a new world. Their art was simple, direct, resolute, optimist, radical. Then came the 30's.

(video by nikolaos333)

• Kino-Glaz
• Remastering a Masterpiece
• Dziga Vertov in New York
• Study # 7 again: Nancarrow and Vertov
• Enthusiasm, 1931
• Three Songs about Lenin, 1934

(Filmele Avangardei)

(Suprematism and Constructivism)

(Russian and Soviet Cinema)