Dziga Vertov unquestionably saw his own approach to cinema—very roughly, non-fictional experimental filmmaking—as a revolutionary response to the October Revolution. How were his films and writings revolutionary, and does their revolutionary character remain legible for us today?
John MacKay is a Senior Fellow at the IFK in Vienna, and Professor of Film and Media Studies and Professor and Chair of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Yale University. He is the author of Inscription and Modernity: From Wordsworth to Mandelstam (Indiana University Press, 2006), Four Russian Serf Narratives (University of Wisconsin Press, 2010), True Songs of Freedom: Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Russian Culture and Society (University of Wisconsin Press, 2013), His Dziga Vertov: Life and Work (Boston 2018) is part 1 of a three volume biographie. His Film Theory: A Very Short Introduction is forthcoming from Oxford University Press 2020.
