Largely forgotten during the last 20 years of his life, the Soviet
filmmaker Dziga Vertov (1896-1954) has occupied a singular and often
controversial position over the past sixty years as a founding figure of
documentary, avant-garde, and political-propaganda film practice.
Creator of "Man with a Movie Camera" (1929), perhaps the most celebrated
non-fiction film ever made, Vertov is equally renowned as the most
militant opponent of the canons of mainstream filmmaking in the history
of cinema. This book, the first in a three-volume study, addresses
Vertov's youth in the largely Jewish city of Bialystok, his education in
Petrograd, his formative years of involvement in filmmaking, his
experiences during the Russian Civil War, and his interests in music,
poetry and technology.