Dziga Vertov Group

The Dziga Vertov Group was formed in 1968 by politically active filmmakers including Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin. Their films are defined primarily for Brechtian forms, Marxist ideology, and a lack of personal authorship. The group was dissolved soon after the completion of 1972's Letter to Jane.

They are generally credited to have made nine films:
*1968 Un Film comme les autres (A Film Like the Others)
*1969 British Sounds/See You At Mao
*1969 Pravda
*1969 Le Vent d'est (Wind from the East)
*1969 Luttes en Italie (Struggles in Italy)
*1970 Jusqu'à la victoire (Until Victory/Palestine Will Win)
*1971 Vladimir et Rosa (Vladimir and Rosa)
*1972 Tout va bien (Everything's Fine)
*1972 Letter to Jane

Jusqu'à la victoire could not be completed after the film's subjects and members of the Palestine Liberation Organization were killed shortly after the innitial footage was taken. Jean-Luc Godard later used the existing material in his 1974 film Ici et ailleurs (Here and elsewhere). In the film, Godard and his wife deconstruct his and Gorin's methods for making Jusqu'à la victoire and they in turn call into question the methods and the manifesto of The Dziga Vertov Group as a whole.

Part of the article Opening cans of Campbell's soupby Jane de Almeida

Published in the Dziga Vertov Group Book

The arrival of the Dziga Vertov Group was accompanied by the arrival of others, suchas the ARC Group (Atelier de recherche cinématographique) and Chris Marker´sSLON group, aided by the new technologies for capture and editing of the cinétracts,since these mini films could be edited directly on the camera, promotingthe idea of the absence of authorship (or of sole authorship) in the name of acollective work.

Thus, Un film comme les autres is the precursor of the series,while not yet being named as a Dziga Vertov Group film 1. It is only later on,probably after British Sounds, that the group took on the name of "DzigaVertov", due to the influence of Jean-Pierre Gorin. With Vent d'Est, the group isestablished and Godard announces that for the Russian filmmaker Vertov, thedefinition of Kinoki is not of filmmaker, but rather of filmhand, differentiatingmoviemaker from film worker2.

Alongside Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin, some other members were morefrequent participants, such as Jean-Henri Roger, who is responsible for BritishSounds and Pravda, writing scripts and directing with Godard; the photographerPaul Burron; Gérard Martin, who is sometimes cited as being co-director of Ventd'Est; and Anne Wiazemsky, who at that time was married to Godard and whoacted in a number of the films of the Group. Other participants were at thefringes of this movement and their precise participation is not known.

This, in a way, is a consequence of the proposal of collective filmmaking. Ironically,despite the collaborative will, the films are generally considered and analyzed asbeing part of Godard's filmography alone. Another consequence is that until notlong ago the films appear to have been adrift among the distributors, who didnot know who to ask for the rights of exhibition. For some time we had no cluesas to how to obtain them, until after a festival of political films in Nantes, in 2003,when Gaumont sent us an answer3.

The same thing occurs when seeking to list the credits for the films, since the entire technical credit is resumed under the name of the Dziga Vertov Group, with one or another name attached.In extreme cases, as in the text by James MacBean on Vent d'Est published in this catalogue, the films appear solely as works by Jean-Luc Godard.

Instead of crediting the films simply to the "Dziga Vertov Group", we decided to publisha credit guide with references to all the different sources. If on one hand thisappears contradictory to the proposals of the Group, on the other it brings a littleof the historicity of the process and its reception, and also enlists subjectivitiessomehow and examines issues related to collective work.

This initiative appears to be coherent when one considers the path marked out by the filmsof the Group. Each film attempts to answer questions remaining from its predecessorsand, almost in the end, in Tout va bien (which at this stage is not a filmby the Group, but rather by Godard and Gorin and signed as such), the conclusionregarding the collective, arising from an initial disappointment with theworkers organizations, falls more evidently upon the individual story as beingthat which constructs the greater history. In a way, this is also the procedure inLetter to Jane.

Nowadays it is more common to think that the Group came intobeing as a result of the effort and desire of Godard and Gorin. Gorin answers,in an interview given in 1970, when he and Godard were asked how many peoplecomprised the Dziga Vertov Group: "At this moment, two, but we are noteven sure. There is a left wing and a right wing. Sometimes he is the left and Iam the right, it is a question of practice". 4 In compliment to this statement,Godard at this time declares several times that working as a group was a way todestroy the dictatorship of the director.

After more than 35 years since its beginning, having been immediately received witha certain furor by the first viewers and soon being relegated to limbo and qualifiedas being "extremist", "radical", "unwatchable" and over politicized by filmlovers and also overly "aestheticizing" for political cinema made at that time,these films return together in the form of presentations or as part of the cinematographyof Jean-Luc Godard, or in tributes that present films made by Jean-Pierre Gorin or within a political theme regarding the 1960's and 1970's. Rarelyis there an exhibition solely of "Dziga Vertov Group" films and, for this reason,another question becomes necessary: what does it mean to watch these filmstoday? Before attempting to frame them within a more temporal perspective,which obliges the receptor to try and understand the object of fruition accordingto what it brings from its time, these films are singular experiences regarding theideological consequences of that which one chooses as a form.

The films lead Brecht beyond alienation, lending continuity to the very Brechtian lesson that theproblem of form is in itself the problem of politics. And in this they bring thebreeze of the freedom with which they were made, in the bold contrast of colorused by those who made films to be seen and not to be read, as Gorin insists,arguing against the proclaimed end of writing 5. In all of the nine films, to agreater or lesser degree, the sound and the image are independent elements thatsometimes dance together and sometimes clash. In this sense, the accusation ofthe pamphletary verbosity is an accusation that is little reflected from a hastypoint of view in that which it presents. There is a first layer containing a solid presenceof spoken lines. But, perhaps given the complexity that these propose, theviewer is left in a position of admitting that there are other layers to be perceivedvia unexpected connections that are brought to life in them.

It is very rare to see a political film that has taken its proposal as far as the films madeby the Dziga Vertov Group. Of course, after the more student based politicalphase, after the prolonged and risky terrorist political attempts, after the growthof the consumer ideologies, after the cultivation of an independent position asa subjective ideal, it is difficult for the common contemporary man to see himselfas belonging to the "bourgeois" or the "worker" group, since he has alwaysbeen a part of both. But since then, the more political films that go against thegrain of power have been so focused on content, so unconcerned with the considerationof form (if we wish, to be submitted to that which Hollywood definesas form), with such simplified readings of what is power, that we appear to havelost the connecting link between what happened in the days of the Group andwhat is happening today. There is, in this sense of loss, a desire for evolutionthat does not always occur, but reviewing and rethinking these films to a pointbeyond that of a nostalgic feeling may stimulate chains of connections that wereunperceived and connections that were already thought of as established, principallyin regard to the world we have constructed since May of 1968.

(...)

Watching these films today is like being able to see a lost part of an important discussionthat may perhaps have fed a line of film making somewhat abandoned byfilm goers and film producers, whose aesthetic project includes the reflectivity ofthe apparatus and a formal experimentation in cinema. A line that unites MárioPeixoto with Júlio Bressane and which, ironically, has nothing to do with socalled "political" cinema. This line includes Glauber, but it appears that the"political" side of Glauber, in terms of the more commercialized interpretationof his Hunger Aesthetic, has been cultivated in our cinema. This is a shame,since it diminishes the diversity of readings on the complexity of the world.

The films of the Dziga Vertov Group, which have less political importance today â€" interms of the more evident political aspect, since in a way the aesthetic choice isin itself a political act â€" are more experimentally interesting. They are what thecinema may consider as being a threshold situation, in as much as that they arestill considered to be films and that they make use of the basic cinematographicapparatus: film, projector, screen, seat, dark room, tickets to enter, traditionalcinematographic time. However, what one sees on the screen is much closer tothat which today is frequently seen in museums in a shorter time frame: the socalled installations, that were more often seen in video and today are made withdigital material. There are several films within each individual film, made accordingto the availability of low cost material, creating images of images recycledwithin the films themselves. There is nothing more "pop" than the impressionsof sunlight on the dark screen, the cards with handwritten schemes, the redframes and the strips of film in Vent d'Est. The economical material movementof the cinema and the plastic arts are opposite. While cinema has high costs andis sold at low prices, the plastic arts generally cost very little and are sold at highprices. In this sense, the films made by the Group follow contemporary art inusing as much everyday material as possible, instead of proposing the carefulfinishing that is demanded with increasing intensity by the modern film industry.Kent Jones, in an article published in this catalogue, uses Gorin's metaphorof the "can-opener" ("We made this film in the same way that you would makea can-opener") to describe the process used to make these films. To make a filmlike a can-opener is to lend it the power to serve as an instrument for openingsomething that is hermetically sealed, such as the image of Jane Fonda inVietnam. If thought of as being a "pop" artefact, the films are not content to simplypresent the new culture or reveal the reality of consumption. Even cans ofCampbell's soup need to be opened.

In interviews made in the days of the Group, generally represented by Godard andGorin, several questions were asked with regard to the audience for which thefilms were made. The duo demonstrated a true concern for this issue when theymade Tout va bien. Despite the presence of famous actors or of the care takenin the finishing, the film was not a public success, and neither was it wellreceived by the critics. Seeing it today, this preoccupation becomes senselessand we are grateful for its existence. Without wishing to say that the film hasfinally reached its audience, or that the works of the Dziga Vertov Group havenow found a public, it would be good if, when considering the policies of supportand funding for films, it would also be possible to argue in the sense of theparadigmatic axis and ask: how many generations will watch these films?

Notes:

[ 1 ] Godard himself admits that Um film comme les autres is the first in the series of revolutionary films he made,in an interview for Kent E. Carrol published in "Film and revolution: Interview with the Dziga-Vertov Group". In Focuson Godard, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1972. p.53.

[ 2 ] In the same interview cited above for Kent E. Carrol given in English in 1970, p. 50.

[ 3 ] The Cahiers du Cinéma comment on this problem when they write about the Festival of Nantes. Patrice BLOUIN."Mémoire. Où est le cinéma politique ?" Paris, April 2003. pp. 10-12.

[ 4 ] Michael GOODWIN, Tom LUDDY and Naomi WISE. "The Dziga Vertov film group in America". In Take One.The film magazine, vol. II, n. 10. Canada, March/April 1970. pp. 8-27. Or in "The Dziga Vertov film group in "America:an interview with Jean Luc Godard and Jean Pierre Gorin", in Cinefiles. Internet version of the same interview:http://www.mip.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/cine_doc_detail.pl/cine_img?11165?11165?1

[ 5 ] Gorin in an interview. Christian Braad THOMSEN, "Jean-Pierre Gorin interviewed. Filmmaking and history",Jump Cut, n. 3, 1974. pp. 17-19. http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC03folder/GorinIntThomson.html

[ 6 ] Affirmation by Gorin in Jump Cut.

[ 7 ] E-mail correspondence. "It is my girlfriend of the time, Isabel Pons, I enlisted to meet Glauber at the crossroad andwhose pregnancy I transformed as a metaphor of our difficulties and our hopes by loading her with a camera; Glauberis in that scene because Raphael Sorin and I went to look for him in Rome; and the procedure, the ‘script' that enabledGlauber to improvise his lines, the idea to have him stand at the crossroad and riff on the ‘cinema do Terceiro Mundo'is mine; and this impossibility to meet for the Tropicalists of the Third World and the conceptualists of the First in questof a revolution of the medium marked by Isabel's three hesitant steps in the direction indicated by Glauber and herreturn to the path she came from, I articulated it..."