电影周 Кино-Неделя

In the spring of 1918 Vertov met Mikhail Koltzov, who offered him a chance to work in the cinema, and thus to extend his montage experiments to visual material. Vertov accepted and became an editor (soon senior editor) of the Moscow Film Committee’s first

regular newsreel. Kino-nedelya (Cinema Week) used material filmed by Soviet cameramen who covered the war from agit-trains, along with all kinds of other documentary material. The intention was always as much propagandist as documentary, and the newsreels were intended to show that despite invasions and civil war, the new Soviet government was spreading its authority throughout the vast territories of the USSR. Vertov put together twenty-nine issues of Kino-nedelya between June 1918 and the end of the year, and ten more in the first

half of 1919. It was invaluable experience for a young filmmaker, and some issues of the newsreel show him beginning to develop touches of originality in his handling of the material, especially in his use of rapid cutting. Vertov ceased to work on Kino-nedelya in July 1919, but

used the newsreel material already accumulated to assemble a long historical (and propagandist) document, Godoushchine revolyutsii (Anniversary of the Revolution, 1919)