Man with a Movie Camera

If the previous film asks whether images can restore the truth, this one inverts the question: the truth was cut together from the start. In 1929 Vertov laid the camera, the tripod, the editing table and the strips of film in front of the lens so audiences could watch a film being manufactured. Ninety-seven years later, every clip we scroll past has passed through the same procedure — only the editing table has gone invisible.

天还没亮，一座城市在睡梦中。摄影师起身，扛起机器，开始他一天的拍摄：工人上班、机器转动、婴儿出生、婚礼与离婚、送葬的队伍、运动员跃起、女工在流水线上包装香烟。与此同时，另一双手在剪辑台上把这些胶片剪开、拼接、倒放、重叠——而这两件事，都被拍进了同一部电影。

Ranked 8th in Sight & Sound's 2012 critics' poll of the greatest films of all time and 9th in 2022; ranked first in the same magazine's 2014 documentary poll. Metacritic aggregates 96/100 and Rotten Tomatoes reports 98% positive reviews. It is regarded as the summit of the city-symphony form and the ancestor of nearly every self-reflexive film since — before it, almost no one had turned the camera on the cinema itself.