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Kino-Eye
Kino-Eye (Anglophonic: Cine-Eye) is a film technique developed in Soviet Union by Dziga Vertov. It was also the name of the movement and group that was defined by this technique. Kino-Eye was Vertov's means of capturing what he believed to be "inaccessible to the human eye"; that is, Kino-Eye films would not attempt to imitate how the human eye saw things. Rather, by assembling film fragments and editing them together in a form of montage, Kino-Eye hoped to activate a new type of perception by creating "a new filmic, i.e., media shaped, reality and a message or an illusion of a message - a semantic field." Distinct from narrative entertainment cinema forms or otherwise "acted" films, Kino-Eye sought to capture "life unawares" and edit it together in such a way that it would form a new, previously unseen truth.
In the early 1920s, cinema emerged as a central medium of artistic expression in the Soviet Union. The relatively new form was celebrated as the tool of a new social order by revolutionary leaders like Lenin and Trotsky. However, by the mid-1920s, as Richard Taylor writes, "The conventional structures of the cinema industry in its three major aspects - production, distribution, and exhibition - had been shattered by the Civil War." Because of the resulting shortage of equipment and other resources, much of the footage shot in Russia in the 1920s was actually used for more "necessary" forms of film such as the newsreel. In fact, the vast majority of "entertainment" films shown in the 1920s were imported from Hollywood, and it was not until 1927 that Soviet-made films outsold imported films in the box office.
Kino-Eye developed as a response to what was happening in much of Soviet cinema at the time Vertov entered the playing field. He wanted a revolutionary form, a form that could represent truth in the way he believed most "acted" films did not. Vertov credited American action films as the first form to harness cinema's incredible dynamism and the use of the close-up, but wanted to explore these forms even more deeply with Kino-Eye. While the new technique of montage and its proponents like Kuleshov and Eisenstein had begun to change the landscape of Soviet film, Vertov's Kino-Eye found popularity in their universality. Jay Leyda writes:
"While most films produced at that time approached revolutionary subject-matter with attitudes strongly influenced by the cheapest theatrical and adventure-film traditions, both in selection and in method, Vertov's films dared to treat the present and, through the present, the future, with an approach as revolutionary as the material he treated."
In fact, Kino-Eye was based more fundamentally on the techniques of the newsreel than on montage or any entertainment-filmmaking process. Over a decade after the Civil War in 1939, Vertov wrote:
"Comrades, masters of Soviet cinema! ... One thing... seems strange and incomprehensible to me. Why is the era of the Civil War missing from your remembrances? It was then, after all, that a very large area of Soviet cinema was born in joyful labor. And from 1918 on, after all, we studied film writing, or how to write with a camera... At that time I specialized in factual film writing. I tried to become a newsreel film writer."
In many ways, Kino-Eye resulted from newsreels and styles of Bolshevik journalism. Jeremy Hicks writes that the Bolsheviks had long espoused the newspaper as the main source of fact and truth. Vertov's cinematic form was a direct response to the truth that he found in journalism and its representations of everyday life. He hoped for Kino-Eye to capture cinematic truth.
Like many of its contemporaneous art forms, Kino-Eye was an attempt to model objectivity amid the contradictions of Soviet modernity. The Kino-Eye was Vertov's solution to what he saw as the diluted nature of "propagandistic-artistic" Soviet film. He thought of film as "dynamic geometry," and therefore Kino-Eye would exploit dynamism in geometric space in a way that the eye could not. By manipulating the camera to exploit movement along with new editing techniques that focused on film speed and transitions, Kino-Eye would construct a new, objective depiction of reality. In 1923, Vertov wrote:
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Kino-Eye
Kino-Eye (Anglophonic: Cine-Eye) is a film technique developed in Soviet Union by Dziga Vertov. It was also the name of the movement and group that was defined by this technique. Kino-Eye was Vertov's means of capturing what he believed to be "inaccessible to the human eye"; that is, Kino-Eye films would not attempt to imitate how the human eye saw things. Rather, by assembling film fragments and editing them together in a form of montage, Kino-Eye hoped to activate a new type of perception by creating "a new filmic, i.e., media shaped, reality and a message or an illusion of a message - a semantic field." Distinct from narrative entertainment cinema forms or otherwise "acted" films, Kino-Eye sought to capture "life unawares" and edit it together in such a way that it would form a new, previously unseen truth.
In the early 1920s, cinema emerged as a central medium of artistic expression in the Soviet Union. The relatively new form was celebrated as the tool of a new social order by revolutionary leaders like Lenin and Trotsky. However, by the mid-1920s, as Richard Taylor writes, "The conventional structures of the cinema industry in its three major aspects - production, distribution, and exhibition - had been shattered by the Civil War." Because of the resulting shortage of equipment and other resources, much of the footage shot in Russia in the 1920s was actually used for more "necessary" forms of film such as the newsreel. In fact, the vast majority of "entertainment" films shown in the 1920s were imported from Hollywood, and it was not until 1927 that Soviet-made films outsold imported films in the box office.
Kino-Eye developed as a response to what was happening in much of Soviet cinema at the time Vertov entered the playing field. He wanted a revolutionary form, a form that could represent truth in the way he believed most "acted" films did not. Vertov credited American action films as the first form to harness cinema's incredible dynamism and the use of the close-up, but wanted to explore these forms even more deeply with Kino-Eye. While the new technique of montage and its proponents like Kuleshov and Eisenstein had begun to change the landscape of Soviet film, Vertov's Kino-Eye found popularity in their universality. Jay Leyda writes:
"While most films produced at that time approached revolutionary subject-matter with attitudes strongly influenced by the cheapest theatrical and adventure-film traditions, both in selection and in method, Vertov's films dared to treat the present and, through the present, the future, with an approach as revolutionary as the material he treated."
In fact, Kino-Eye was based more fundamentally on the techniques of the newsreel than on montage or any entertainment-filmmaking process. Over a decade after the Civil War in 1939, Vertov wrote:
"Comrades, masters of Soviet cinema! ... One thing... seems strange and incomprehensible to me. Why is the era of the Civil War missing from your remembrances? It was then, after all, that a very large area of Soviet cinema was born in joyful labor. And from 1918 on, after all, we studied film writing, or how to write with a camera... At that time I specialized in factual film writing. I tried to become a newsreel film writer."
In many ways, Kino-Eye resulted from newsreels and styles of Bolshevik journalism. Jeremy Hicks writes that the Bolsheviks had long espoused the newspaper as the main source of fact and truth. Vertov's cinematic form was a direct response to the truth that he found in journalism and its representations of everyday life. He hoped for Kino-Eye to capture cinematic truth.
Like many of its contemporaneous art forms, Kino-Eye was an attempt to model objectivity amid the contradictions of Soviet modernity. The Kino-Eye was Vertov's solution to what he saw as the diluted nature of "propagandistic-artistic" Soviet film. He thought of film as "dynamic geometry," and therefore Kino-Eye would exploit dynamism in geometric space in a way that the eye could not. By manipulating the camera to exploit movement along with new editing techniques that focused on film speed and transitions, Kino-Eye would construct a new, objective depiction of reality. In 1923, Vertov wrote:
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