The Man with a Movie Camera (Chelovek S Kinoapparatom) (1929)

Dziga Vertov (Denis Kaufman) began his career with newsreels, filming the Red Army as it fought during the Russian Civil War (1918-21) and screening the footage for audiences in villages and towns who boarded the "agit-trains". The experience helped Vertov formulate his ideas about cinema, ideas shared by a group of like-minded young filmmakers who called themselves Kino-Glaz (Cine-Eye). The group's principles - the "honesty" of documentary as compared with fiction film, the "perfection" of the cinematic eye compared with the human eye - inform Vertov's most extraordinary picture, the dazzling The Man with a Movie Camera.