GEETAM 2004 MODULES

adequately. Certainly, it was the first to enjoy popular success. However, it can be argued that Shub s film was aided by an atmosphere
of curiosity and openness towards the possibilities of the new forms of newsreel, or documentary, created by ethnographic film. When
Mayakovsky s journal LEF was relaunched in as new LEF, it turned to documentary as a key strategy for the transformation of art and
society. Yet this was a revolution occurring without its instigator, and over whose course Vertov had lost control. Instead, from his new
post in Kiev, accompanied by Svilova and later joined by his brother Mikhail Kaufman, he was preparing a new coup: the ultimate
purification of filmic expression, the swansong of silent cinema. The Eleventh Year: The minimal number of Intertitles of all the
comments made about his films, one in particular rankled: A Sixth Part of the World was condemned for subordinating the images to its
intertitles. For radical Russian film-makers it was an article of faith that film s development as a distinct medium required it to cast off
the encumbrances of literature and drama. Vertov himself frequently denounced fictional films for the very same excessive influence of
literature. Whether or not their purpose was to respond to such suggestions, Vertov s next two films nevertheless constituted a more
than effective riposte: The Eleventh Year uses minimal intertitles, and Man with a Movie Camera uses none at all. Vertov was now going
one better having himself introduced a range of widely adopted innovations in intertitles. With these films Vertov pushes his
experiments with film as a discrete visual medium to the utmost. They appear as a kind of visual coda to silent film: conscious of its
impending demise in the wake of the invention of sound, Vertov seems to demonstrate silent cinema s incredible versatility in the
articulation of ideas. This new course towards films of even greater formal experiment seems incredibly hold, given that Vertov s
previous two films were already innovative. Yet, by the late s, avant-garde artists increasingly had a sense that their time had gone, that
the revolution no longer had any place for them. As one of Vertov s associates, Alexei Gan, put it in: The time of slogans for the present
has passed. The choices were either to return to hack work in the old, pre-Revolutionary way, or to abandon all practical work and
produced theoretical works exclusively. While Vertov would ultimately be forced to return to the plodding kind of newsreel he had once
transformed, for the moment he took the second path, choosing something akin to theoretical work, only in film. Unable to reach wide
audiences in the present, he produced arcane works aimed at future artists. This is certainly one way of understanding The Eleventh
Year, and especially Man with a Movie camera. Such films are clearly envisaged by Vertov in an October article in which he describes
five different types of film work he anticipates for the Cine-Eyes in the coming period. These include current newsreel weeklies,
thematic newsreels covering several months, complex newsreels summarizing a year, scientific or educational films and finally experimental film
studies, laboratory research, laying down new paths for all the Cine-Eye movement as a whole while Man with a
Movie Camera fits the category of experimental film work, an aid primarily to film-making, The Eleventh Year may be seen as something
between newsreel and experiment. Contemporaries were struck by the unusual style of the film. As Zhemchuzhny commented, The
Eleventh Year was more of a laboratory experiment than something for broad usage. This was especially evident in its intertitles, which
Vertov claimed set a records low number for all Soviet films. Similarly, Vertov stresses the film s visual style, anticipating his statements
about Man with a Movie Camera: The percent language of cinema designed to be perceived visually, to be thought about visually.
Certainly, for large parts of The Eleventh Year themes of construction are rendered by dynamic lines of workers marching, together with
trucks and tractors moving in the same direction, and then by myriad shots of exploding and hammering rock all punctuated by barely
a single intertitle. The intertitles are reduced to a minimum so that the pictures speak for themselves. Nevertheless, there are sequences
in which the film also uses intertitles with greater frequency. The film begins travelogue-style, identifying geographical features, and
towards the end of the film the repetition of We are constructing and the triad of On the earth, under the earth and above the earth
intercut with images of trains, mining and aeroplanes, is very much in the style of A Sixth Part of the World. Moreover, The Eleventh Year
is classified by its own titles as newsreel, and correspondingly the film begins by setting out a clearly defined space in the construction
of the Dnipre hydroelectric dam. In fact, it almost seems ploddingly well situated in time and space when compared with Vertov s
previous films. This initial geographical integrity is clear from the fact that, while planning the film, Vertov drew a map showing the
location of the various elements on the film in relation to each other, showing the Nenasytets or insatiable rapids upstream from the
dam. This is almost certainly the only Vertov film for which it is possible to draw such a map relating the main elements in it.
Nevertheless, the film then moves on from the single place and theme to take in greater thematic and geographical sweep, incorporating
material from Kharkov, Sipov and the Volkhov hydroelectric dam. Vertov recognised the tension between the manner in which it sets
out a clear sense of space before progressing to a more metaphorical, fluid style: The first part is obviously at a level at which it is easier
for the viewer to take it in; the fourth and fifth pasts are constructed in a more complex way. They contain far more montage
inventiveness than the first two parts; they are looking more to the future of cinema than the second and third parts. I have to say that
the fourth and fifth reels have the same relation to the first reel as a higher education does to a secondary school. It is natural that more
complex montage forces the viewer to experience more tension and demands greater attention in order to be taken in. Aware that his
films would not necessarily find willing spectators in the present, Vertov is in part appealing to future generations of film-makers. This
hedging of bets was wise given the at best mixed reception of his other full-length films. Yet, even with regard to posterity, The Eleventh
Year has not fared terribly well and is seldom seen as many times as it requires, by contrast with man with a movie camera. On
detailed scrutiny. However. The Eleventh Year emerges as one of Vertov s most accomplished works. Despite its orientation towards the
future spectator, this is a film set in the present time to a greater extent than any Vertov had made since Cine-Pravda. Throughout the
time-frame is clearly of the present day: we see none of the ability to use archive footage to construct a narrative. It appears that he no
longer has at his disposal a whole library of film footage dating back to the revolution. In the new context of Ukraine, Vertov has little
choice but to shoot new footage, and from this material forge his narrative. Consequently, rather than use the before-and-after
flashback structure of Forward, Soviet! where images of ruin are contrasted with those of construction, Vertov extends the approach
adopted in A Sixth Part of the World, where images of traditional and modern life are juxtaposed to articulate the same narrative of
socialist transformation. In The Eleventh Year Vertov tells the same story by drawing in images taken exclusively from the construction
of the Dniepr hydroelectric dam. The dam is contrasted with the image of the archaeological remains of an ancient Scythian uncovered
during the excavations. Here we have spatial continuity but with sharply discontinuous temporal associations. The First Five Year Plan is
a turning point in history, an epochal moment setting history free from the bonds of the past. In order to articulate this narrative Vertov
draws deeper than ever on the resources of metaphoric association, structuring the opening of the won by providing television coverage
of certain issues in one case, or silencing coverage of certain issues in the other, downplays the extent to which individuals and
communities form opinions and prioritize issues based on their oval lived experience, cultural knowledge, expectations and interpretive
frames of when viewers lived reality includes personal experience, even at second hand, of foreign policy or military measures that
directly contradict media messages from the same source, the messages are inevitably undermined. The credibility problem that
attends the US as a promoter of democracy in the Middle East region is a case in point, with negative implications for the potential

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