THE MOVING PICTURE BOY ARCHIVE

KINO GLAZ

Title: Кино глаз
Roman transliteration: Kino glaz
English title: Kino Eye
Literal translation of Russian title: Cinema Eye, or Cinema's Eye
Year of Release: 1924
Director: Dziga Vertov
Country of Production: Soviet Union
Principal Boys: The film features numerous Young Pioneers, two of whom are named in the intertitles: Latishov, and Borya, the latter a leader of a Young Pioneer troop.
Genre: Documentary, Silent
Length: 1 hr 18 min
Language: Intertitles in Russian
Availability: The film is included as an extra on the Eureka! Masters of Cinema blu-ray release of Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera.
English subtitles: Subtitles to the Russian intertitles are supplied on the Eureka! blu-ray.

Synopsis
Young Pioneers, enthused with the optimism of the Soviet state, put up posters, help people out, and variously nag and hector their elders into what they regard as behaviour more becoming to the new Soviet man and woman. Contrasted with these eager Pioneers are the social flotsam of the pre-revolutionary society, including drug addicts, black marketeers, and patients of mental asylums, the latter rather unkindly presented as figures of comic amusement.

Dziga Vertov supposedly had a theory behind his film-making that he called Kino-Eye, but in truth it is difficult to extract anything of any great substance from his various pronouncements. Nevertheless, his films, and this one in particular, certainly include some very innovative film sequences, such as, using reverse motion, the unbutchering and unslaughtering of a bull, as well as a reverse sequence of bread being unbaked, flour being unmilled, etc. and ultimately the rye ending up back in the rye field. Kino Eye is thus both a joyfully exuberant movie, and undeniably a fascinating social document of its time.

Alternative film poster

Screenshots