From Magician to Epistemologist: Vertov's The Man with a Movie Camera

In this essay from 1972, first published in Artforum, Annette Michelson explores Dziga Vertov's masterpiece The Man with a Movie Camera (1929) at a moment when the name of the master of Soviet documentary style was gaining traction but his work was under-analyzed. Rigorously inventorying the many techniques Vertov uses to disrupt cinematic illusionism, Michelson argues that the film marks a significant transition in Vertov's practice—from the “world of naked truth” of the Kino-Eye to the more complex “exploration of the terrain of consciousness itself” that structures The Man with a Movie Camera.