1929 - MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA, an art film out of Soviet Russia

An arty silent film sort of a documentary from the Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertog real name David Abelevich Kaufman.  This film is a completely plotless piece and has no titles in it since there is basically no story.

The cameraman who appears throughout the film is Mikhail Abelovich Kaufman the brother of Dziga Vertog.  There is some interesting film making going on here involving split screen effects and very frenzied editing in fact lots of at times interesting optical stuff.

 

Apparently Vertog's film was fairly controversial when it came out.  Unsurprisingly considered this was Communist controlled Russia which wasn't a place that was all that hospitable to individual artistic expressions.  The film was shot around Moscow and in some ways this is the most interesting aspect of it since you get a look at life in Moscow before World War I. 

 

I would have to say that all of Vertog's photography tricks only goes to show that when it comes to film in many ways people are still creating 

films in much the same ways as they were back in the 1920's before sound came in, editing is editing after all.

The film was written by Dziga Vertog and the running time is around 68 minutes.  It exists on YouTube in  a fairly decent copy if you are so inclined.