Man with a Movie Camera, 1929
One of the movies I absolutely have to watch yearly (and if you’re studying filmmaking, this is your quintessential Holy Book), Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera is a remarkable film, way ahead of its times. It is also a film about film-making, shots of the city and the Man (Vertov’s brother and cinematographer, Mikhail Kaufman) are interspersed with images of the film being edited by Vertov’s wife, Elizaveta Svilova. There are occasional views of the audience in a cinema reacting to events on the screen, watching the very film that they are appearing in.
The film was shot with a French-made Debrie Parvo ‘L’ camera, introduced by André Debrie in 1926.
