Kino-Pravda No.18 ties an astonishing number of places and subjects together in one long “movie camera race”; a formula that Dziga Vertov would repeat in later works. It might also be seen as a demonstration of his idea, formulated in the manifesto We (1922), that “intervals (the transition from one movement to the other) are the material, the element of the art of movement, and by no means the movements themselves”. Lifts, airplanes, cars, minecarts, trams (keep your eyes open for a cameo by Mikhail Kaufman) and multiple intertitle styles combine to take the viewer and the operator – himself a protagonist – “in the direction of Soviet reality”, where children, workers and peasants of different origins cross paths in the city streets. The “communist baptism” (oktjabriny) sequence, with its hard lighting and complex editing, also reminds us that Vertov was no stranger to a level of performativity for the camera, concluding in what he had earlier described as an “apotheosis: a poetry of labour and movement”.

Luis Felipe Labaki