Operator Kaufman

Photo not from the film Operator Kaufman. Dziga Vertov: The Man With a Movie Camera (1929). A montage in Charles Silver's blog Inside / Out, MoMA, 20 April 2010.

OPERATOR KAUFMAN (Rasmus Gerlach, D 1999+)
    Dir: Rasmus Hamburg; ph: Irina Linke, Rasmus Hamburg; ed: Tim Tonstein; consultants: Thomas Tode, Aleksandr Deriabin; interviewees: Alexander Hammid, Jakov Tolchan, Elizaveta Svilova, Henri Storck, Jonas Mekas, Erik Barnouw, Mikhail Kaufman, Pierre Merle; DVD, 60’, bn e colore / b/w & color, sonoro / sound, Rasmus Gerlach, Hamburg.
    Versione inglese, con sottotitoli in inglese / English, Russian, German, & French dialogue, with English narration & subtitles.
    In the presence of Rasmus Hamburg.
    Viewed at Cinema Ruffo, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM) (Vertov), 11 Oct 2004.

Thomas Tode (GCM): "Rasmus Hamburg’s film Operator Kaufman is an experimental-style biopic about the lives and works of three famous avant-garde filmmakers, who also happen to be brothers. David, Mikhail, and Boris Kaufman were born to middle-class parents in Tsarist Russia, and came to prominence as filmmakers in the 1920s. The film takes the year 1929 as its starting point, when David, better known as Dziga Vertov, directed the classic Man with a Movie Camera. His cinematographer and star was his brother Mikhail, who went on to make the avant-garde film Vesnoi (In Spring) in the Ukraine the same year."

"Operator Kaufman is a work-in-progress which showcases the three brothers and their amazing contribution to the world of cinema. As Andrew Gilby of the Brisbane Film Festival wrote: "Rasmus Hamburg has done his best to make an avant-garde film modelled after the work of his famous subjects — including his own ‘man with a movie camera’ footage of everyday citizens in Russia today — but the real stars of the film are the brothers themselves, in interviews, and more especially in clips from their ground-breaking works." The film, still an ever-growing database, was awarded the Prix du Documentaire Historique by the 2000 UNESCO Film Festival for Art and Education in Paris, and recently won the documentary award at the 2004 Athens International Film and Video Festival in Ohio. Chris Marker called it a moving movie." – Thomas Tode (GCM)

AA: Vertovian documentaries form a fine sub-category of their own: in many, like here, the form of the movie has a Vertov touch.