Shagai, Sovet! / Stride, Soviet!

Dziga Vertov: Shagai, Sovet! (1926). Poster: photo from Österreichisches Filmmuseum: Collection Dziga Vertov: Shagai, Sovet!

DZIGA VERTOV IX
Moderator, live translator, narrator and explicador: Yuri Tsivian
Grand piano: Tama Karena
Cinema Ruffo, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), 12 Oct 2004

Prog. 9 (72’)

Dziga Vertov: Goskinokalendar 51. Photo: Österreichisches Filmmuseum, Collection Dziga Vertov.

GOSKINOKALENDAR 51 / [CINECALENDARIO DI STATO / STATE KINO-CALENDAR NO. 51] (Goskino, USSR 1925)
Dir: Dziga Vertov; 35 mm, 153 m., 7’ (20 fps), RGAKFD.
Didascalie in russo / Russian intertitles.

Yuri Tsivian (GCM): "This issue of Kino-Calendar begins with a political sensation: a Polish diplomat in Soviet Russia, Catholic priest Usas, has just been arrested in Moscow on charges of sexual molestation. However, our reason for showing this film before Stride, Soviet! is scholarly, rather than atheist or sensationalistic. The film ends with a report from a rally staged in support of the upcoming elections to the Moscow Soviet, the Soviet equivalent of the municipal council. It’s a rally much like any rally, with crowds, orchestras, banners, and women workers delivering scripted speeches. All this is shown in Kino-Calendar, including the buses which the Moscow Soviet used to round up the participants. A regular kind of event, covered as a regular newsreel should. But do take note of these buses, in order to appreciate what Vertov does with this footage in Stride, Soviet! — a film that is anything but regular." – YURI TSIVIAN (GCM)

AA: Multiple framelines.

Dziga Vertov: Shagai, Sovet! (1926). Frame enlargement from Österreichisches Filmmuseum: Collection Dziga Vertov: Shagai, Sovet!

SHAGAI, SOVET! (MOSSOVET. MOSSOVET V NASTOIASHCHEM, PROSHLOM I BUDUSHCHEM.) / [AVANTI, SOVIET! / STRIDE, SOVIET! (THE MOSCOW SOVIET. THE MOSCOW SOVIET IN THE PRESENT, PAST, AND FUTURE.)] (Goskino [Kultkino], USSR 1926)
Author-Leader: Dziga Vertov; ph: Ivan Beliakov; asst. dir: Elizaveta Svilova; film reconnaissance: Ilia Kopalin; rel: 23.7.1926; 35 mm, 1481 m., 65’ (20 fps), Österreichisches Filmmuseum.
Didascalie in russo / Russian intertitles.

Yuri Tsivian (GCM): "The story of how this film was made is one of crime and punishment — if not a crime, then at least a deception. As the election of a new Mossovet (Moscow Municipal Soviet) was due in 1926, at the end of 1925 the sitting Moscow Soviet passed a resolution to commission a promotional movie which would show all the good things the Soviet had done for the city in the previous year. Kultkino (Goskino’s documentary section, then headed by Vertov) accepted the commission, as it gave Vertov a chance to make a feature-length documentary — a luxury which the poorly funded Kultkino otherwise could not afford."

"Though evidence exists (a formal scenario — even though in his writings Vertov denounced the use of scenarios in filmmaking!) that in the beginning Vertov honestly tried to make the kind of picture the Mossovet was expecting, he obviously soon got into his stride, for in the end Stride, Soviet! is very much a Vertov movie, a film experiment, an emotional film — anything but a promotional picture which would help the functionaries of the Mossovet get re-elected. No sessions are shown, no officials introduced, no names named, and the heroic role of the Moscow Soviet is pretty much relegated to intertitles. I cannot believe Vertov was so naïve as to think that the Soviet would be pleased with the result — he simply wanted to make the movie he wanted to make."

"Stolen freedom is freedom nonetheless. Very soon Vertov would play the same kind of trick with the State Trading Organization, which commissioned an export commercial — and got a totally useless, incoherent, crazy masterpiece called A Sixth Part of the World (wait for Program 11). This time, though, the deception cost Vertov his job. As for Stride, Soviet!, the punishment was lighter: When the film was shown to the Presidium Committee of the Moscow Soviet, the utterly nonplussed Presidium came up with a list of cuts and amendments, the hilarious idiocy of which you will appreciate if you look up the minutes taken at their meeting (translated in Lines of Resistance: Dziga Vertov and the Twenties). In the end, the Mossovet refused to recognize Stride, Soviet! as the film it had commissioned; though it was widely discussed by the press, it was largely boycotted by film theatres."

"On the other hand, put yourself in the shoes of the Mossovet — imagine what the poor Presidium members must have felt as they saw what Stride, Soviet! had made of the election rally orchestrated in front of the Mossovet building — the same rally which Vertov had quite faithfully covered in his 1925 Goskinokalendar. There, there were people, and speeches, and buses waiting to take people home. Here, there are no people, just buses, and cars, and various other vehicles, gathered in the square in front of Mossovet, to listen to a loudspeaker. Not a single human soul is seen speaking, just a mechanical device talking to other mechanical devices about weapons and tools — how during the years of peace hammers and nails came to replace rifles and bullets (all this illustrated by found-footage inserts). The cars and buses are emotionally moved — they applaud (guess how), and as the title card says, "the hearts of the machines are beating," we watch various engine details in action. As the sequence goes on, numerous close-ups of factory machine-tools join this heartbeat percussion."

"All this does not baffle us today as much as it did the Mossovet members — for they hardly knew Vertov’s 1922 manifesto "WE", which declared what his one-time friend Aleksei Gan termed the "metallization of man". No people are shown at the rally? Possibly this somehow relates to the following passage from this manifesto: "For his inability to control his movements, WE temporarily exclude man as a subject for film. Our path leads through a poetry of machines, from the bungling citizen to the perfect electric man." There are other sequences in Stride, Soviet! which make this prospect chillingly visual. Two workers are shown playing checkers. As they do so, Vertov superimposes details of mechanisms on the players’ heads, so that one of them is inscribed in a rounded metallic frame, while the other appears to be wearing an electric helmet of sorts. Or take three frames from another such sequence, in which a worker is — almost literally — dissolved in a spinning part of his machine tool. All this looks like pointless trickery — unless we happen to know its point."

"One last thing. Vertov never shied at re-using footage from his previous films — because, from the kinocs’ standpoint, every new film they made, regardless of its title, was nothing more than a new installment in one continuous documentary, which they called Kino-Eye. Recycled footage only affirmed this overarching unity. Stride, Soviet!, for instance, includes the shot of a factory chimney falling — we recall this shot from his earlier Lenin Kino-Pravda. The handshake with the word "smychka" superimposed on it is also from this film." – YURI TSIVIAN (GCM)

AA: Actual duration of the screening: 69'03".