Man With a Movie Camera: The Global Remake

“This film is an experiment in cinematic communication of real events without the aid of intertitles, without the aid of a scenario, without the aid of theatre. This experimental work aims at creating a truly international language of cinema based on its absolute separation from the language of theatre and literature.” This text is the beginning of  Dziga Vertov’s 1929 film ‘Man With A Movie Camera’ that records the progression of one full day, synthesizing footage shot in Moscow, Riga, and Kiev. The movie is often described as an urban documentary where the subject of the film is also the film itself – from the role of the cameraman/the ‘camera eye’ to that of the editor, its projection in a theatre, and the response of the audience. It is a film within a film, an endless burst of inventive effects – dissolves, split screen, slow motion, freeze frame.
Shot in the Russian industrial landscape of the 20’s, what images of Vertov’s footage translate in the world today?
This is the main question that Perry Bard was inspired by when she started the experimental project ‘Man With a Movie Camera: The Global Remake’. It is a participatory video shot by people around the world who are invited to record images that interpret Vertov’s original script and then upload them to the website. Software was developed specifically for this project to enable anyone to upload footage to the site and thus become part of the database. When the work streams, the contribution becomes part of a worldwide montage, in Vertov’s idea, the “decoding of life as it is”.
Every day a new version of the movie is built: on the left is Vertov’s original, on the right is a shot uploaded from a participant.

More info and the videos on http://dziga.perrybard.net
You can watch the original film on youtube. The version with cinematic orchestra is strongly recommended. It is truly beautiful!