Anniversary of the Revolution

Director /1918/: Dziga Vertov

Director of Restoration /2018/:

Nikolai Izvolov

Documentary, History / Russia, Israel

119 min

Completed

At the age of 22, Dziga Vertov, the most famous documentary filmmaker in the world, began his career creating an epic documentary revealing the events of the Russian Revolution. The events that took place from February 1917, when the Bourgeois revolution began, to the autumn of 1918, the start of the Russian civil war.

The film’s cinematic uniqueness is the fact that this was the first full-length documentary of this size in history. Vertov made the film within 10-12 days, while keeping in mind the entire sequence of the picture, which contained more than 1000 cutouts.

Not a single copy of the film survived even though in the early 1920s, “Anniversary of the Revolution” served as the basis for many editing tapes. For many decades it was considered lost until the Russian film historian and filmmaker Nikolai Izvolov brought it back to life.

The restored film’s world premiere took place at the 2018 IDFA Festival in Amsterdam where it was triumphantly screened with live music. Since then it was screened at many international film festivals and other venues.

Born in Białystok on January 2^nd, 1896, by the name of David Kaufman, he is better known as Dziga Vertov, a soviet avant-garde filmmaker, news head editor and film editor, then a documentary filmmaker and theorist that passed away on February 12^th, 1954. He developed the “kino-glaz” (“film-eye”) theory claiming that the camera, much like the human eye, should be an instrument best used to explore the actual events in real life. During the 1920s his theory influenced the international development of documentaries and cinema realism, while Vertov attempted to create a unique cinema language, free from theatrical influences and artificial studio staging. His notable works include filmed newsreels (“Kino-nedelia”, “Kino-Pravda”), feature films “cine-objects” (“Kino-Glaz”, “The Sixth Part of the World”, “The Eleventh Year”, “The Man with a Movie the Camera”). He also contributed to the establishment of a new sound cinema (“Enthousiasm”, “Tri Pesni o Lenine”). Vertov’s films and theories have widely influenced the documentary cinema history.

Nikolay Izvolov is a historian and cinema theorist, researcher of film archives and specialist in reconstruction of the “lost” old films.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, he has been teaching the course “Practice of work in film archives” for students of the film studies department of VGIK (All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography).

Author of the books “The Phenomenon of Cinema. History and Theory“ and “Unknown pages of Russian Avant-garde Film History”.

The premiere of “Anniversary of the Revolution” took place simultaneously in several cities in Russia. But since few copies were made for each released film those days, it instantly became a collector’s rarity and soon disappeared. The positive prints were badly damaged, and many were lost. The film’s negatives were repeatedly used to produce other newsreels and chopped into small pieces, as that was the procedure in those days.

Even though he worked until he passed away in 1954 at the age of 58, his 1918’s ambitious debut film “The Anniversary of the Revolution”, was supposed to be his masterpiece and career highlight. But until now it’s been impossible to truly measure Vertov’s achievements as the film was unavailable to view.

Distinguished Russian film scholar Nikolai Izvolov describes himself as a sort of archaeologist. The Moscow-based historian and researcher spent a great deal of time carefully restoring and piecing together fragments from other historical films found in the archives that were originally used for Dziga Vertov’s first film, The Anniversary of the Revolution, made in 1918.

Anniversary of the Revolution (Godovshchina Revoliutsii, 1918) was the first directorial and editorial experience of Dziga Vertov. For many years the film was considered lost and has not been the focus of researchers’ attention. In 1967, Viktor Listov attributed some parts of this gigantic compilation film, which consisted of historical chronicles of the events in Russia from 1917 to 1918.

Nikolai Izvolov on Restoring Dziga Vertov’s ‘The Anniversary of the Revolution >>

— Variety —

IDFA Celebrates the Centenary of Dziga Vertov’s Long-Lost First Film The Anniversary of the Revolution >>

— IDFA —

Dziga Vertov’s ‘Anniversary of a Revolution’ Has its Second Moscow Premiere >>

— The Moscow Times —

Anniversary of the Revolution with Dorota Lech

— TIFF —

In this restored version of his debut work, the film pioneer, Dziga Vertov documents Russia between >>

— DOK.fest München —

Godovshchina revoliutsii / Anniversary of the Revolution introduced by Nikolai Izvolov >>

— Anti Alanen: Film Diary —

SCREENING & LIVE EVENT Anniversary of the Revolution >>

— Museum of the Moving Image, New York —

Anniversary of the Revolution (1918) Dziga Vertov >>

— Historical Materialism, London —

The London première of Dziga Vertov, Anniversary of the Revolutionn >>

–UCL, London–

Godovshchina revolyutsii –
>>

–FILM-DOCUMENTAIRE.FR–

Director /1918/: Dziga Vertov

Director of Restoration /2018/:

Nikolai Izvolov

Documentary, History / Russia, Israel

119 min

Completed

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