Two versions of Dziga Vertov's fascinating montage of life in
Moscow are included on this tape. The first is the original
silent version, with music by the Alloy Orchestra. The second
version includes a commentary by Yuri Tsivian, Russian silent
cinema historian. Vertov makes innovative early use of dissolves,
split screen, slow motion and freeze frames in this fascinating
document of life in Twenties Russia. The DVD also includes the
option of watching the film with a new soundtrack, composed by
the In the Nursery orchestra.
From .co.uk
-----------
"An experiment in the creative communication of visible events
without the aid of inter-titles, a scenario or theatre "ing at
creating a truly international absolute language of cinema," is
how the inter-titles describe what is about to be seen. Bold
cls indeed, but in its awesome sophistication The Man with a
Movie Camera does live up to them, making it one of the most
contemporary of silent movies. The subject, the life of a city
from dawn to dusk, was not original even for 1928, but its
was--the cameraman as voyeur, social commentator and
prankster, exploiting every trick permissible with the technology
of the day (slow motion, dissolves, split screens, freeze frames,
stop motion animation, etc). A young woman stirs in her bed,
apparently fighting a nightmare in which a cameraman is about to
be crushed by an oncoming train. She wakes up, and the sequence
is revealed to be a simple trick . As she blinks her weary
eyes, the shutters of her window mimic her viewpoint, and the
iris of the camera spins open. Self-reflexive wit like this
abounds here--there's even a delicious counterpoint made between
the splicing of film and the painting of a woman's nails.
The film was the brainchild of the Moscow-based film-maker Dziga
Vertov (real name Denis Arkadyevich Kaufman), a furiously
inventive poet of the cinema who made innumerable shorts about
daily life (such as the much-quoted "Kino-Pravda"), and played at
candid camerawork and cinema vérité long before they became the
clichés of the television age. The editing has a fantastic
abandon that makes most pop videos look sluggish. --David
Thompson
P.when('A').execute(function(A) {
A.on('a:expander:toggle_description:toggle:collapse',
function(data) {
window.scroll(0, data.expander.$expander[0].offsetTop-100);
});
});
From the Back Cover
-------------------
Man With A Movie Camera is an extraordinary piece of filmmaking,
a montage of urba Russian life showing the people of the city at
work and at play, and the machines that keep the city going. It
was Vertov's first full-lenth film, and he used all the cinematic
techniques at his disposal - dissolves, split screen, slow motion
and freeze-frames - to produce a work that is exhilarating and
interllectually brilliant.
This special Edition DVD features a choice of three soundtracks
ro accompany the film:
A soundtrack composed and performed by the Alloy Orchestra, who
have closely followed Vertov's notes on music to accompany the
film.
A new score from In The Nursery, who successfully toured the UK
with the film last year. Their score deploys the latest music
technology to create a soundtrack reflects Vertov's own
progressive filmaking techniques.
A commentary by Yuri Tsivian, the leading historian of Russian
silent cinema. HIs provocative and stimulating account makes this
masterpiece of documentary cinema accessible as never before.
See more ( javascript:void(0) )