In the reading, Introduction to Documentary by Nichols Bill, He defined what the documentary is. He indicates that “for every documentary there are at least three stories that intertwine: the filmmaker’s, the film’s, and the audience’s. These stories are all, in different ways, part of what we attend to when we ask what a given film is about. That is to say, when we watch a film we become aware that the film comes from somewhere and someone. I personally think that the movie, Man With A Movie Camera, is doing great in showing the audience what the life in that certain time period is about. The story the movie is trying to present is the urban life in the Soviet cities of Kiev, Kharkov, Moscow, and Odessa. There are none of the actors, but the way the director made could really let the audience feel the lifestyle. As the reading states, “Every film is a documentary. Even the most whimsical of fictions gives evidence of the culture that produced it and reproduces the likenesses of the people who perform within it.” Also, he mentioned that there are two kinds of film, documentaries of wish-fulfillment and documentaries of social representation. A movie could be either a story or a narrative. In this movie, I believe it tends to be the documentary of social representation, as he captured the scenes of life in Soviet cities. According to the reading, “every documentary has its own distinct voice. Like every speaking voice, every cinematic voice has a style or “grain” all its own that acts like a signature or fingerprint. It attests to the individuality of the filmmaker or director or, sometimes, to the determining power of a sponsor or controlling organization.” I really love the middle of the movie when the director captured the clips of the bus and the elevator. I found it interesting because the scenes were all very changing very quickly. The bus clips show how busy people were, they crossed the track for bus and all walked very fast. Later on, there was a clip that has a human’s eye and a picture of the street. They shifted super rapidly and it is extremely annoying and bothering because the audience could not really see what that is. However, I believe it really demonstrated the urban and busy lifestyle in that time period. Lastly, I think the unique way of editing this movie. This is very much like an experimental video because it used a lot of different technique of editing to give the audience a different feeling. Overall, I think watching this movie and reading the book had made me understand more about how the director and editor are trying to tell us.

Bibliography:

Nichols, Bill. ​Introduction to Documentary. ​Indiana University Press, 2001.

Man With a Movie Camera ​(1929) USSR. 68 min. by Vertov