ATTENTION VIEWERS

Attention viewers: the cinema is young.

Our course is called 'cinematic modernism', and to reiterate the obvious, this is because cinema and modernism go hand in hand. There is hardly something which we may call the cinematic baroque, cinematic classicism or even romanticism for that matter, in the sense that we refer to other forms of art, music, architecture and fashion.

To take a personal example, of the 'baby-face' of cinema, in my family there have only been three generations of cinema goers.
1. My Nonno (grandfather), who (with two rings in pocket, to make sure my Nonna (grandmother) had a choice) proposed to my Nonna in the movie cinema. My research has been unable to uncover exactly which film the proposal occurred after. In these days, it didn't seem to matter what the film was.
2. My parents, who went to drive in movie cinemas on balmy summer evenings.
3. And me, who when moving to Sydney took pleasure in attending the cinema by myself, as a gesture of (some sort of) coming of age.

I shall like to think of Vertov's Man With a Movie Camera (1929) as a 'birth' of sorts – like the short, memorable scene in his film – of medium and message; of the cinematic experience, cinema making itself and, of the "kino-eye". In short, the birth of both a manifesto, and the medium of film making, which, has the ability to lend itself to the very notion of the manifesto, for reasons, which I shall point out.


At the beginning of Vertov's film, he clearly states; "Attention Viewers: This film is an experiment in cinematic communication of real events". The film's use of experimental angles and 'random', absurdest, non-narrative visible events; such as a birth, a homeless man and a scene at the pub, where the camera man enters the beer; all combine to present us a piece of art, to muse upon the potential of cinema's "total separation from the language of literature and theatre".

It could be argued that it is the relatively 'newness' of the medium of cinema – even today – that lends itself to revolutionary, artistic purposes, more easily accepted than other mediums such as literature or music. Unlike a discordant sound in the middle of a Mozart work, or a symphony (such as that which accompanies Vertov's intentionally discordant work, was (and still is) able to be - what I'd like to call - 'comfortably revolutionary', as he was working with a new and malleable medium of cinema. Like Vertov's self conscious opening sequence where the camera captures the empty cinema fill up with people, we become reminded that even today there is something distinctly modern – and thus 'new' – about the cinematic experience.


At its most base, the notion of a 'manifesto' is a declaration of intentions and objectives for a certain object, thing or political party – in this case, it is the purpose of Vertov's film. As far as I believe, a manifesto is ultimately a Homo sapian construction and cinema, as Vertov presents it to us, demonstrates how naturally the camera simulates 'real human experience'. Unlike symphonies, theatre or poetry, the sensual and systematic behaviour of the camera has the potential to mimic 'the real', and go above and beyond it.

For Vertov, the "kino eye" is about occularity; the notion of the camera being fused to the eye of the man – they are one of the same machine; "our path leads through the poetry of machines, from the bungling citizen to the perfect electric man" [1]. Man With a Movie Camera was his manifesto for this idea.

I'd like to start by saying that if the baby, shown being born in Vertov's film, were born today, the chance that its first glimpse of this world being daddy with a movie camera, is quite probable. I think this raises interesting questions about "kino eye" and the inability to escape it in our day and age.

I'd like to consider questions about the potential inversion of the "kino eye" in our contemporary context. What happens, when it is man fused to camera not the other way around. As a culture we are not all at one with a movie camera, however what the eye of the camera has captured, becomes inescapable in our own experience of the world, hence its fusion to us. How may you or I ever imagine a city like New York, without envisaging what we've already seen at the movies? Will I ever look at the Eiffel Tower, but through the eyes of the many films I've seen before it? I've never been to Berlin, but Vertov takes me there in angels that I may or may not experience when I see it for myself. I will not be able to help but tilt my head this way and that when I go there – because the camera has taken me there first.

I think this sort of 'inversion' of the "kino eye" is especially relevant to our experiences of the modern day urban city - for they have become recurrent characters in themselves over the course of movie making.

But then again, if the camera and the man are one of the same machine, can we invert them in a 'postmodern' context?
Perhaps not.

Vertov writes:
Kinochesto is the art of organising the necessary movements of objects in space as a rhythmical artistic whole, in harmony with the properties of the material and the internal rhythm of each object [2].

When I think back to my Nonno, proposing to my Nonna in an urban movie theatre all those years ago, I see the marriage proposal playing out rhythmically in black and white. I feel the beat of the credits of the romantic, black and white film, rolling over in the background, with their silhouettes shadowing the screen. Then I see a distinct frame beginning to form around them both, like they're in a movie too, and I'm watching them sitting in a cinema, just like the one in Vertov's film.

Except the man with a movie camera is an inescapable imaginary being in my head.

REFERENCES:

[1]Annette Michelson (Ed), Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press,1984, p.8.
[2]Ibid, p. 8.