EC: FORWARD, SOVIET!

Directed by Dziga Vertov

1925 / 73min

“What do Jean-Luc Godard, Jean Rouch, Peter Kubelka, Stan Brakhage, Allen Funt, and Santiago Alvarez have in common? All of them were anticipated, if not directly influenced, by the genius of Dziga Vertov, one of the half-dozen most important personalities in the history of cinema, and a key figure in 20th century culture as a whole.” –J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE “FORWARD, SOVIET! was commissioned by the Moscow soviet for the 1926 elections. Structurally, the film compares prerevolutionary famine and disease with the dynamism of revolutionary life. Then after a sequence on newborn babies, Vertov’s irrepressible futurism bursts forth. Buses and cars hold a political rally without the benefit of their drivers; an extended montage celebrates industrial forms with such gusto as to make Léger’s contemporaneous BALLET MÉCANIQUE seem virtually Luddite.” –J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE