Скачать или смотреть Eteenpain Neuvosto aka Stride, Soviet! (1926) [RUSSIAN]

Action / Documentary

Two years after the end of the war and four years after having delivered his first and last feature fiction film, To You, Front (Tebe, front), Dziga Vertov composed an extensive “Artistic Calling Card (1917-1947)” in which he, over the course of 137 paragraphs, meticulously described one project after another – thirty years of work as the pioneer in Soviet cinematography.

By recollecting memories, quoting influential reviews, and addressing what he thought of as the great misunderstandings and obstacles in his (failed) career, Vertov self-consciously engaged in the self-historicisation of his œuvre. Here, each film becomes part of a larger conception in revolutionary media practices.

Within the evolutionary framing of this “Artistic Calling Card” the film Stride, Soviet! (Shagai, Sovet!), premiered on July 23, 1926, is related to as an experiment in finding a first application of “devices for shooting according to the method of ‘Distracting Attention’”. “Later”, he writes, “this method was adopted for use in feature films, albeit without notable success.” Thus, in terms of formal questions, Stride, Soviet!, together with its predecessor Kinoglaz (Vertov’s first feature-length film manifesto from 1924), stands for establishing a technically advanced and device-oriented non-fiction film within the broader field of the common (communist) tasks of Soviet cinema. For Vertov, at that time the only noticeable counterpart of Sergei Eisenstein (whose Stachka (Strike, 1927) was praised as the first victory of Revolutionary Film), the use of avant-garde means in non-fiction was crucial: Fighting for his film-eye (kinoglaz) method meant fighting against Eisenstein’s film-fist (kinokulak) method, even if only on the level of rhetoric. If Kinoglaz was a first demonstration of a radically different approach in educating the new viewer’s eyes, Stride, Soviet! was to become a second punch in the genre battle.