Description
This film by Dziga Vertov is one of the key works of the avant-garde cinema, in which the city becomes not merely a backdrop but a living organism, brought together into a single rhythm by the logic of montage.
Filmed in Kyiv, Moscow, and Odesa in 1928–1929, the film encompasses various aspects of urban daily life from factories and trams to maternity hospitals and recreational areas creating a dynamic map of the Soviet city. Thousands of residents of these cities are not actors in the traditional sense, but rather elements of the city’s ceaseless movement: workers, athletes, vacationers, and tram passengers—all are incorporated into the general flow of life. The camera captures this movement, transforming urban daily life into a continuous stream of images.
The film became a radical experiment with cinematic language and had a fundamental influence on the development of cinema.