Дзиґа Вертов

Activity: Culture
Date of birth: January 2, 1896
Date of death: February 12, 1954
Context: World Wars

A theorist, director, and co-founder of documentary cinema. A pioneer of the “hidden camera” method.

David Kaufman—his real name—was born in Poland, then part of the Russian Empire. His father was a bookseller, the owner of two bookstores and the custodian of a city library. Because of World War I and the unstable political situation, the Kaufman family had to move several times. In his youth, David studied at a music school, the Petrograd Psychoneurological Institute, and Moscow University.
The world of cinema opened up to him by chance—in 1917, a friend invited him to work in the office of the Moscow Cinema Committee. At first, it was dull clerical work, but a year later he was assigned to edit the newsreel The Anniversary of the Revolution. Around that time, he came up with the pseudonym “Dziga Vertov,” under which he entered film history.
From 1920, Vertov worked as a documentary filmmaker, notably contributing to the newsreel series Kino-Pravda. In 1922, together with colleagues, he founded the avant-garde group of documentary filmmakers called the “Kinoks,” which called for replacing the “staging of life’s phenomena” with real life captured by the mechanical “cinema-eye”: “We reveal the soul of machines; we are in love with the worker at the machine, the peasant on the tractor, the engineer on the locomotive. We bring the joy of creativity to every kind of mechanical labor. We make peace between man and machine. We educate a new person.”
In 1924, Vertov created the silent experimental film Kino-Eye, declaring it the first film in the world made without actors, costume designers, makeup artists, or set designers. The film received an award at the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Paris but faced sharp criticism from Soviet colleagues—even accusations of “wasting film stock.” An early draft of Ilf and Petrov’s novel The Golden Calf included a satirical portrayal of Vertov as “Krainykh-Vzglyadov, a great fighter for the idea of the film fact,” who films a cigarette butt in a trash bin so that it resembles a cannon barrel and considers shooting under train wheels his specialty.
In 1927, Vertov was dismissed from Sovkino, allegedly for failing to meet filming deadlines, and moved to the Odesa Film Studio, where he completed the silent documentary Man with a Movie Camera (1929)—a chronicle of a single day in the life of a large city. In Ukraine, he created the first Soviet sound film, Enthusiasm: Symphony of the Donbas (1930), emphasizing real industrial and everyday sounds. While glorifying industrialization, collectivization, and the struggle against religion, the film also captured signs of the Ukrainization program in the Donbas, which was already being curtailed in the 1930s.
In the early 1930s, Vertov returned to Moscow, where he continued making films dedicated to Leninism and revolutionary struggle. During World War II, he produced several films about the Soviet people’s fight against Nazism and their heroic labor on the home front. After the war, the director became a victim of a new Stalinist campaign against so-called “rootless cosmopolitans,” which masked ordinary antisemitism. His new projects were rejected by authorities, and until the end of his life he was forced to work as a newsreel editor.
Vertov died at the age of 58 from a malignant tumor on February 12, 1954. His film Man with a Movie Camera, which had initially failed at the box office, is now included among the hundred greatest films in the history of Ukrainian cinema, and in 2014 the British Film Institute named it the greatest documentary film of all time.

Author: Olha Herasymenko

Brief conclusions

Cultural figure and reformer — one of the founders and theorists of documentary cinema, also known as the father of Ukrainian sound cinema.
Public figure — sought to create a new kind of cinema that reflected reality while also serving as a tool for influencing society.
Cinema — founded and led the avant-garde documentary group “Kinoks” in the 1920s, experimenting with new forms of documentary filmmaking; created the major Soviet newsreel Kino-Pravda, where he tested his theoretical approaches to cinema as an art form.
Directing — produced the first Ukrainian sound film Enthusiasm (Symphony of the Donbas) (1930). His film Man with a Movie Camera (1929) became a classic of world documentary cinema and is recognized as one of the greatest documentaries of all time.
Legacy—made a groundbreaking contribution to the theory and practice of documentary filmmaking and influenced directors worldwide.

Portal Editorial Team