The Kinonedelja (Kino-Week) newsreels represent Dziga Vertov’s first contribution to cinema. A total of forty-three issues, each containing an average of five to seven different items, were produced between May 1918 and June 1919. The newsreels consist of reports on political demonstrations, news of the Civil War and portraits of activists and functionaries. They form a document of important historical events, but they portray people and everyday life as well. Time and again, the people being filmed become the subject, as the presence of the camera draws their attention and elicits curious, suspicious, shy or worried gazes into the lens.

Kinonedelja No. 1, issued on the 20th of May 1918, shows the celebrations on the occasion of the centenary of Karl Marx’s birth where both Lenin and Trockij appear, refugees waiting to be repatriated at the border between the Russian and German-occupied areas in Orša, the revolutionary Pavel Dybenko before the Revolutionary Tribunal, the Finnish representative Manner on his arrival in exile in Petrograd (Saint Petersburg), and scenes of everyday life in Moscow.

Kinonedelja No. 4, issued on the 25th of June 1918, consists of filmic portraits of Volodarskij (commissar of press and propaganda), Čaprašnikov (Bulgarian envoy to Moscow) and Ružek (Consul in Helsinki), it shows the construction of the Kazanskij Station in Moscow, workers enlisting for the defense of the Socialist Nation in Moscow, images of Petrograd, and the grave of G.V. Plechanov at the Volkovo cemetery.

Janneke Van Dalen