Studio

All-Ukrainian Photo-Cinema Administration

2: briefs
13:00: average
26 min: in total

On film.briefs2

Man with a Movie Camera

Dziga Vertov · 1929

Man with a Movie Camera (1929) is a Soviet silent documentary directed by Dziga Vertov, filmed by Mikhail Kaufman and edited by Vertov and Yelizaveta Svilova. Shot across Moscow, Kiev, Kharkov and Odessa, it presents urban life through radical montage, self-reflexive technique and zero intertitles — aiming to forge a pure cinematic language. With over 1,775 shots in 68 minutes, it remains a foundational essay-film on perception, machinery and the modern city.

13:00

Earth

Oleksandr Dovzhenko · 1930

Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s 1930 silent film Earth observes collectivisation in rural Ukraine through image, not argument. Shot by Danylo Demutskyi in Poltava Oblast, it traces cycles of life and death — an old man dying beneath an apple tree, a young man dancing before being killed, a woman grieving then embracing anew — all bound by soil, season and silence. Its power resides in physical presence: dust, light, hands, rain. Though politically controversial on release and later banned, it endures as a lyrical, unsentimental vision of continuity amid upheaval.