Kino-Eye: The writing of Dziga Vertov

(1984). (Annette Michelson ed. & Kevin O'Brien trans.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

1923. Kinoks: A revolution

Vertov called the camera a kino-eye [cine-eye] and was so obsessed to the amount that he identified himself with the eye:

"I am kino-eye. I am a builder. I have placed you, whom I've created today, in an extraordinary room which did not exist until just now when I also created it." (17)

"I am kino-eye, I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, show you the world as only I can see it.
Now and forever, I free myself from human immobility, I am in constant motion, I draw near, then away from objects, I crawl under, I climb onto them. I move apace with the muzzle of a galloping horse, I plunge full speed into a crowd, I outstrip running soldiers, I fall on my back, I ascend with an airplane, I plunge and soar together with plunging and soaring bodies. Now I, a camera, fling myself along their resultant, maneuvering in the chaos of movement, recording movement, starting with movements composed of the most complex combination" (17)

1924. The birth of kino-eye

Vertov further defined the kino-eye:

"Not kino-eye for its won sake, but truth through the means and possibilities of film-eye, i.e., kinopravda["film-truth"].
Not "filming life unawares" for the sake of the "unaware," but in order to show people without masks, without makeup, to catch them through the eye of the camera in a moment when they are not acting, to read their thoughts, laid bare by the camera.
Kino-eye as the possibility of making the invisible visible, the unclear clear, the hidden manifest, the disguised overt, the acted nonacted; making falsehood into truth.
Kino-eye as the union of science with newsreel to further the (p. 41) battle for the communist decoding of the world, as an attempt to show the truth on the screen--Film-truth." (p. 42)

Vertov called him and his colleagues kinoks as opposed to cinematographers. Editor and translator explained this term as "cine-eye men".

1924. On Kinopravda

One of Vertov's newsreels, Kinopravda, was distinct from the traditional newsreels in that Vertov experimented in assembling film footage representing a certain epoch into "harmonious" montage (p. 42). It was not a simple recording of an event. The 14th Kinopravda was totally rejected by the authority because of its obscurity and made Vertov perplexed. Nonetheless, Vertov pointed out young people and workers received it well. He simply noted:

"Kinopravda made heroic attempts to shield the proletariat from the corrupting influence of artistic film-drama. To many, these attempts seemed ridiculous. The paltry number of prints of Kinopravda could serve, at most, some thougsands of people, not millions. But though Kinopravda's role in the creation of an extensive workers' repertoire was small, its propagandistic action in the battle with the commercial movie theater repertoire proved signiticant." (p. 44)

[Here, Vertov hinted at the formulation of the kino-eye movement.]

"In attacking Kinopravda our detractors gloatingly point out that it's made from previously shot, and therefore "random" footage. To us this means that the newsreel is organized from bits of life into a theme, and not the reverse. This also means that Kinopravda doesn't order life to proceed according to a writer's scenario, but observes and records life as it is, and only then draw conclusion from these observations." (p. 45)

1924. Artistic drama and kino-eye

In this note, Vertov more clearly demonstrates the essence of the kino-eye movement, rooted in the grassroots participation from worker correspondents and agricultural correspondents:

"Comrades, I am speaking on behalf of the kinoks group. As most of you know, our group doesn't connect either its existence or its work with what is called "art."
We engage directly in the study of the phenomena of life that surround us. We hold the ability to show and elucidate life as it is, considerably higher than the occasionally diverting doll games that people call theater, cinema, etc. " (p. 47)

1925. The Essence of Kino-Eye

Vertov defined the kino-eye movement: "led by newsreel workers, the kinoks, [it] is an international movement, and its development is keeping strides with the worldwide proletarian revolution" (p. 49).

Organized by film editors, cinema-worker correspondents cooperated in making decisions on distribution and other tasks. Vertov used the term "decoding" in defining the objective:

"The method of radio-broadcasting images, just recently invented, can bring us still closer to our cherished basic goal--to unite all the workers scattered over the earth through a single consciousness, a single bond, a single collective will in the battle for communism.
This objective of ours we call kino-eye. The decoding of life as it is. Using facts to influence the workers' consciousness." (p. 49)

The purpose of cinema became clearer to Vertov:

"We will not prepare for the broadcast of operas and drama. We will prepare wholeheartedly to give the workers of every land the opportunity to see and hear the whole world in an organized form; to see, hear, and understand one another." (p. 56, in 1925)

1958. Love for the living person.

Vertov later in his life had this conversation:

"As a matter of fact, everything I have done in cinema was connected, directly and indirectly, with my persistent effort to reveal the thinking of the 'living person.' Sometimes that person was the film's author-director, not shown on the screen. Sometimes this image of the 'living person' included traits not of a single concrete person, but of several and even many people who had been chosen accordingly." (p. 156)

Here he implied that authors can be multiple in cinema.