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Kino-Pravda, Nos. 9-11, 13 (Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: A Film Poem Dedicated to the October Celebrations) (U.S.S.R., 1922);
Kino-Pravda, Nos. 14-17 (U.S.S.R., 1922-'23);
Soviet Toys (U.S.S.R., 1924)

Kino-Pravda No. 15 (1923)
February 17, 2012 - 7:30 pm
Billy Wilder Theater
In-person: 
Margarita Nafpaktitis, UCLA Slavic and East European Studies.

Prints courtesy of the Austrian Film Museum

Kino-Pravda, Nos. 9-11, 13 (Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: A Film Poem Dedicated to the October Celebrations) (U.S.S.R., 1922)

Directed by Dziga Vertov

Certain that he could improve upon the American adventure film, “with its showy dynamism…rapid shot changes, and the close-up,” Vertov used quicksilver montage to celebrate the speed and efficiency of modern machines and man in the New Russia. In breathless images we see the opening of the racing season in Moscow, the All-Russia Olympiad and, in Kino-Pravda 13, Aleksandr Rodchenko’s Constructivist intertitles, a masterpiece of graphic design.

35mm, b/w, silent w/ Russian intertitles and live English translation, 18 fps, 86 min.

Prints courtesy of the Austrian Film Museum

Kino-Pravda, Nos. 14-17 (U.S.S.R., 1922-'23)

Directed by Dziga Vertov

This program features some of Vertov and Aleksandr Rodchenko’s most ingenious experiments in graphic design, including Kino-Pravda No. 14, for which Rodchenko devised three-dimensional intertitles that appear to float in space. For No. 15, cameramen Frantsisson, Beliakov and Kaufman, produce a firework of newspapers bursting like “agit-shells” and a Proletarian “hammer of knowledge” while No. 16 features rare glimpses of Sergei Eisenstein’s first film, Dnevnik Glumova (Glumov’s Diary).

35mm, b/w, silent w/ Russian intertitles and live English translation, 18 fps, 79 min.

Preceded by:

Print courtesy of Pacific Film Archive

Soviet Toys (U.S.S.R., 1924)

Directed by Dziga Vertov

One of Vertov’s first animated films, drawn by Ivan Beliakov and Aleksandr Ivanov, Soviet Toys celebrates the smychka alliance of workers and peasants through the humorous depiction of a piggish bourgeoisie who grotesquely drinks, eats, and vomits.

35mm, b/w, silent w/ Russian intertitles and live English translation, 24 fps, 13 min.

Musical accompaniment provided by Cliff Retallick.

Part of: 
Kino-Eye: The Revolutionary Cinema of Dziga Vertov