Dziga Vertov
Dziga Vertov : Le ciné-œil de la révolution
Author(s) Dziga Vertov
Format paperback book
Year 2017
Language(s) French
Pages 776 pages
Description
Dziga Vertov is both famous for his film The Man with a Camera (1929) and little known, so abundant, multiple, and dispersed is his work. Drawing from a selection of his texts—some previously unpublished, others revised and completed in their translation—accompanied by critical apparatus that situates them within the debates of their time while measuring their contemporary resonances, this book aims to bring Vertovian thought back into circulation in all its complexity.
His attempt to capture "life caught unawares," the "facts," in order to bring forth a "cinematic truth" based on the double vision of the Kino-Eye and on the analytical power of montage, is traced from the 1910s-1920s through the 1930s-1950s—moving from his pioneering role, in phase with political events, to his progressive marginalization.
Vertov's project, which consisted of seizing the techniques of recording, editing, and broadcasting images and sounds to "organize" the sight and hearing of workers and make them participate in the new social order born from the 1917 revolution, finds particular resonance today in the perspective of a "media theory" examining the technical articulations of forms of experience and knowledge.
The volume is enriched with numerous iconographic documents from the Dziga Vertov collection of the Österreichisches Filmmuseum in Vienna.
"A precious compendium, to be recommended or given as a gift to the most demanding cinephiles."
— François Ekchajzer, Télérama