Home
search
more | tips
IMDb > Chelovek s kino-apparatom (1929)

Chelovek s kino-apparatom (1929) More at IMDbPro »

Photos (see all 16 | slideshow)

Overview

User Rating:
8.3/10   4,249 votes
MOVIEmeter: ?
No change in popularity this week. See rank & trends on IMDbPro.
Director:
Dziga Vertov
Writer:
Dziga Vertov (writer)
Contact:
View company contact information for Living Russia, or The Man with a Camera on IMDbPro.
Release Date:
12 May 1929 (USA) more
Genre:
Documentary more
Plot:
A cameraman travels around a city with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness. full summary | add synopsis
User Comments:
Artistic truth never rests in real life more

Cast

 
Mikhail Kaufman ... The cameraman
Create a character page for: ?

Directed by
Dziga Vertov 
 
Writing credits
Dziga Vertov (writer)

Original Music by
Pierre Henry 
Nigel Humberstone 
Konstantin Listov 
Michael Nyman (2001)
 
Cinematography by
Mikhail Kaufman 
 
Film Editing by
Yelizaveta Svilova 
 

Production CompaniesDistributors
Create a character page for: ?

Additional Details

Also Known As:
Человек с Киноаппаратом (Soviet Union: Russian title)
Living Russia, or The Man with a Camera (USA)
Man with a Movie Camera (International: English title)
The Man with a Movie Camera
The Man with the Movie Camera
Czlowiek z kamera (Poland) [pl]
Der Mann mit der Kamera (Germany) [de]
El hombre de la cámara (Spain) [es]
Kore ga Russia da (Japan) (theatrical title) [ja]
L'home de la màquina de filmar (Spain: Catalan title) [ca]
L'homme à la caméra (France) [fr]
L'uomo con la macchina da presa (Italy) [it]
Mannen med filmkameran (Sweden) [sv]
Mies ja elokuvakamera (Finland) [fi]
O Homem da Câmara de Filmar (Portugal) [pt]
O Homem da Câmera (Brazil) [pt]
O anthropos me tin kinimatografiki mihani (Greece) [el]
Um Homem Com uma Câmera (Brazil) (video title) [pt]
more
Runtime:
68 min
Country:
Soviet Union
Aspect Ratio:
1.33 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
Silent
Filming Locations:
Kiev, Ukraine more
Company:
VUFKU more

Fun Stuff

Trivia:
The film anticipates many of the techniques used 50 years later in Koyaanisqatsi (1982). more
Movie Connections:
Edited from Kinoglaz (1924) more

FAQ

This FAQ is empty. Add the first question.
8 out of 9 people found the following comment useful:-
Artistic truth never rests in real life, 30 September 2007
10/10
Author: stalker vogler from Xanadu

I have always watched Chelovek s kino-apparatom with a feeling of bewilderment. It's amazing how a movie this old can have such a great deal of things to say almost eighty years after it was released. This is more than a documentary; it's a meditation on how movies are constructed and about the artificial nature of art in general. At the beginning we have a prologue in which Vertov makes explicit his claim to separate the medium of cinema from the theater and literature and give it a particular, distinctive set of features that should identify it as a medium of communication. It has to be noted that both the media of theater and literature had become significantly stale by the time of Vertov, Modernism had managed to complicate the "rules of the game" so much that a shift of perspective was definitely welcome. Focusing on cinema a few early Russian directors hoped to produce a truer account of life than was previously the case with other media. This is why Vertov went against any fictitious plot for the movie. This attitude was at the same time O.K with the Party leadership and it represented a distinctive and very personal aesthetic vision on art. By now it is common knowledge that one of the most interesting things in this movie is its self-referential nature, in that it depicts the making of the movie we are actually watching. Immediately we are bothered by a certain peculiarity of the situation, because it becomes obvious that there must be somebody offering the perspective on the man making the movie and we wonder whose perspective is that. It is evident that the idea rests on the very artificiality of art, in this case cinema with its infinite capacity of lying. Put this together with the hyper-editing involved (I don't think there is one single shot in the movie that is longer than five seconds) and you obtain something that would only be equaled (and I dare say not surpassed) by the last movie by Welles, F for Fake, also a documentary with many peculiarities. From a cinematic standpoint the movie is pure eye candy. The shots are not always directed, as it was also the case with Lumiere and Melies (to whom the movie pays a well-deserved tribute) but the shots are constructed with a perfect sense of composition and they display a wide range of cinema tricks that make the movie a synthesis of cinema up to that point. Though there is no story attached, the director manages to abstract from the images, during the editing stage a range of patterns that focus on the image as the main semantic vehicle of the movie (no inter-titles are used). The image becomes much more important than in any other movie I have seen and with the help of editing the director creates a multi-layered plot that can be given diverse interpretations making the movie a challenge at each viewing.

Was the above comment useful to you?
more

Message Boards

Discuss this movie with other users on IMDb message board for Chelovek s kino-apparatom (1929)
Recent Posts (updated daily)User
buying the poster shakey-lo
Playing in sync with the Biosphere score... murderdolls-man
Pink Floyd + Vertov= A Beautiful Montage g_fresh6969
Nazi-symbol ? 9-1
poetic mode? help! whenemusattack
MAGIC WichardWogan
more

Recommendations

If you enjoyed this title, our database also recommends:
- - - - -
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Koyaanisqatsi Olympia 2. Teil - Fest der Schönheit Chris & Don. A Love Story The First Olympics: Athens 1896
IMDb User Rating:
IMDb User Rating:
IMDb User Rating:
IMDb User Rating:
IMDb User Rating:
Show more recommendations

Related Links

Full cast and crew Company credits External reviews
IMDb Documentary section IMDb Soviet Union section Add this title to MyMovies

You may report errors and omissions on this page to the IMDb database managers. They will be examined and if approved will be included in a future update. Clicking the 'Update' button will take you through a step-by-step process.