Who was Dziga Vertov and what was his original name?
Dziga Vertov was a Soviet-Jewish filmmaker born David Abelevich Kaufman in Białystok, Poland during 1896. He Russified his name to Denis Arkadyevich Vertov sometime after 1918.
Short answers, pulled from the story.
Dziga Vertov was a Soviet-Jewish filmmaker born David Abelevich Kaufman in Białystok, Poland during 1896. He Russified his name to Denis Arkadyevich Vertov sometime after 1918.
Dziga Vertov adopted the name Dziga Vertov after the October Revolution of 1917. This pseudonym translates loosely from Ukrainian as spinning top.
Vertov launched the Kino-Pravda series in 1922 while working from a damp basement in central Moscow. The series contained twenty-three issues produced over three years with each episode lasting about twenty minutes.
The Ukraine State Studio hired Dziga Vertov to create Man with a Movie Camera in 1929 using his brother Mikhail Kaufman as cinematographer. The film contains shots where two trains appear to melt into each other and uses slow motion and fast motion techniques to dissect images.
Dziga Vertov formulated Cine-Eye theory within his 1919 manifesto We: Variant of a Manifesto because he believed this concept would help humanity evolve from flawed creatures into higher forms. He compared man unfavorably to machines regarding self-control capabilities and claimed electricity offered unerring ways that active people could not match.
Dziga Vertov died of cancer in Moscow during February 1954. International rediscovery of Vertov began gaining momentum during the 1960s and 1970s while Russian historian Nikolai Izvolov found lost portions of Anniversary of the Revolution in 2018.