Man At The Center With A Movie Camera

Vertov_org_chart_Kino_mubi.jpg
I’ve had this image of Dziga Vertov’s filmmaking process/org chart on my desktop for a couple of weeks now, ever since it was image of the day at mubi.com.
It’s specifically for his “Kino Korrespondent” films, which he produced in 1922-25. There’s crew in concentric circles, expanding out from the director. And the four quadrants of the wheel are apparently “fronts”: documentary, literary, recording, and editing. It seems like a cycle, or an iterative process.
MoMA just completed a major retrospective of Vertov’s films, including, for the first time, all his Kino-Pravda works. The working diagram immediately reminded me of the poster that was the icon for the series, from the 1930 film, Enthusiasm: Symphony of the Donbass. Enthusiasm is an experimental film symphony of synched documentary image and concrete sound.
vertov_poster_moma_50504.jpg
image of the day: how Dziga Vertov organizes filmmaking [mubi.com]
Image, obviously, from the Austrian Film Museum’s Dziga Vertov Collection [filmmuseum.at]
Dziga Vertov, 15 Apr – 4 June, 2011 [moma.org]