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TEN MEDIA PRAXIS HISTORIES:
Tag Archives: 01. Newly Soviet Russia (1920s)
Kino-Fist
This is the online site of the film collective Kino Fist. We run a more-or-less monthly film screening at the E:vent Gallery in Bethnal Green, London. We aim to show films that are both politically and aesthetically interesting and yet rarely screened. We also aim to reinstate the centrality of both the B-movie and the [...]
Vertov, Dziga. “WE: Variant of a Manifesto” (1922)
“The machine makes us ashamed of man’s inability to control himself, but what are we to do if electricity’s unerring ways are more exciting to us than the disorderly haste of active men and the corrupting inertia of passive ones? Saws dancing at a sawmill convey to us a joy more intimate and intelligible than [...]
01. Newly Soviet Russia (1920s)
After the revolution of 1917, Soviet cineastes became engaged in state-supported media praxis. Their signal accomplishments included bold theories and practices of montage within the context of cultural revolution.
Committed to introducing dialectical materialism to new Soviet citizens, these filmmakers engaged in a formalist project establishing the unique powers of cinema as both modernist technology and [...]
Eisenstein, Sergei on the “slogan” (1929)
“It will be the art of the direct cinema of a slogan. Of communication that is just as unobstructed and immediate as the communication of an idea through a qualified word.
The epoch of the direct materialization of a slogan takes over
from the epoch of a slogan about material…”
-Sergei Eisenstein, “Eisenstein on Eisenstein, the Director of [...]
Juhasz, Alexandra. “Mp:me, Variant of a Manifesta, 2008″
(After “WE: Variant of a Manifesto,” Dziga Vertov, 1922) I call myself MP:me (Media Praxis : Alexandra Juhasz)—as opposed to “cinematographer,” one of a herd of machomen doing rather well peddling slick clean wares. I see no connection between true femi-digi-praxis (the integration of media theory, digital practice, and feminist politics in an historical [...]
Vertov, Dziga. Re cinema does not exist.
“We maintian that despite the comparativly long existence of cinematography as a concept, despite the large number of dramas- psychological, pseudohistorichal, detective- that have been released… despite the infinity of movie theaters that have opened, in its present form, cinema does not exist and its main objectives have not been realized.” Kino-Eye
Vertov, Dziga. Re kino-eye.
“Until now, we have violated the movie camera and forced it to copy the work of our eye. And the better the copy, the better the shooting was thought to be. Starting today we are liberating the camera and making it work in the opposite direction — away from copying. The weakness of the human [...]
Vertov. Kinoks: A revolution.
“You–filmmakers, you directors and artists with nothing to do,
all you confused cameramen and writers scattered throughout the
world…..
A friendly warning;
Don’t hide your heads like ostriches.
Raise your eyes,
Look around you–
There!
It’s obvious to me
as to any child
The innards,
the guts of strong sensations
are tumbling out
of cinema’s belly,
ripped open on the reef of revoultion.
See them dragging along,
leaving a bloody trail [...]
Eisenstein. “Eisenstein on Eisenstein,” re Tendentiousness.
“Without a clear idea of the why and wherefore of a film one cannot, in my view, start work. Without knowing which latent moods and passions one has to speculate on one cannot create…” He goes on to say that tendentiousness doesn’t have to be political but it must be present. “…if people think of [...]
Dovzhenko, Alexander. 1930. Earth: The Opening
The opening scens from Earth (Zemlya literally translated “Soil”) (1930) a Soviet film by Ukrainian director Alexander Dovzhenko concerning an insurrection by a community of farmers, following a hostile takeover by Kulak landowners. It is Part 3 of Dovzhenko’s “Ukraine Trilogy” (along with Zvenigora and Arsenal).
It was named #88 in the 1995 Centenary Poll of [...]
Juhasz. “Writing the ME & the WE”
From the blog, Media Praxis.
So, I’ve been writing weird poetry—an homage to Vertov and Esfir Shub—as a way out of the trap of trying to write about YouTube video off the internet, on paper. Very rough, but loads of fun. Here’s the beginning:
The Me & the WE: Variants of a Manifesto Concerning First Person Media [...]
Perrybard. Man With a Movie Camera Global Remake 1/7
GLobal Remake
People around the world are uploading footage to http:dziga.perrybard.net to remake Vertov’s 1929 classic. Instructions and links on the site. Yhe new version plays as a split, the original on the left, remake on the right. Where there is nothing on the right there have been no uploads. Upload now!
Man with A Movie Camera Global Remake
Man With a Movie Camera: The Global Remake is a participatory video shot by people around the world who are invited to record images interpreting the original script of Vertov’s Man With A Movie Camera and upload them to this site. Software developed specifically for this project archives, sequences and streams the submissions as a [...]
Vertov. Cine-Eye.
“I am the Cine-Eye. I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, show you the world only as I can see it. Now and forever, I free myself from human immobility. I am in constant motion.” Dziga Vertov, in Graeham Roberts “The Man with the Movie Camera,” p 20
Eisenstein. “Eisenstein on Eis,” re the slogan
“The slogan ‘All for one and one for all’ was not confined to the screen. If we shoot a film about the sea, the whole navy is at our disposal; if we shoot a battle film, the Red Arm joins in the shooting and, if the subject is an economic one, then the commissariats assists. [...]
Juhasz. Mp:Me Variant of a Manifesta (Thanks to Dziga Vertov)
This is my manifesta, against YouTube, and for people-made video that resists corporate culture while embracing history, politics, and community. It is an homage to “WE: Varient of a Manifesto,” Dziga Vertov, 1922.