💾 Archived View for bjornwestergard.com › notes › vertov-man-movie.gmi captured on 2023-07-22 at 16:29:49. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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2022/11/05 09:10
Saw this delightful Soviet film last night at at the AFI Silver theatre with live accompaniment by Antique Orchestra. As the title cards say, it is a film "without actors, without theatre" depicting everyday life in Odessa and Moscow.
The influence on "Koyaanisqatsi" is apparent, particulary with its multiple exposure shots of beachgoers and pedestrians. That film prompts anxiety and revulsion with industrial development, portraying humans as strangers to one another, interlopers in a corrupted landscape.
In this film, however, industrial labor produces abundance in a convivial urban environment. We watch Soviet citizens work and play hard. We witness the labor required to shoot, edit, and screen films. We view them viewing. The eponymous movie maker careens around his audience's environment, straining to provide a synoptic overview of their lives.
If commodity fetishism were ideological, such a film could in principle go some way toward dispelling it by giving a perspicuous account of the totality of social labor.