Man with a Movie Camera (Blu-ray)

*This is not a comic! But I love silent films and I love Michael Nyman!

By Dziga Vertov. Produced by BFI. 

Region B Blu-ray, 70min, 1929

Dziga Vertov’s ground-breaking Man with a Movie Camera uses an array of dazzling cinematic techniques to record the people of the city at work and at play, and the machines that keep the city going. Presented with Michael Nyman’scelebrated score, this classic film is accompanied by an exciting selection of new extras, including Vertov’s Three Songs of Lenin and two of his radical 1925 documentary films, both of which feature equally radical new soundtracks by electronic outfit Mordant Music.

• Nyman’s celebrated score played by the Michael Nyman Band
• Audio commentary by Russian film scholar Yuri Tsivian
• Kino-Pravda No. 21 (Dziga Vertov, 1925, 35 mins): Newsreel devoted to Lenin on the anniversary of his death, with a new Mordant Music score
• One-Sixth of the Globe – ETV version (Dziga Vertov, 1925, 72 mins): ideologically charged documentary, presented in its specially-prepared ETV version, with a daring new soundtrack by Mordant Music
• Three Songs of Lenin (Dziga Vertov, 1935, 57 mins): poetic propaganda film reciting three admiring folk songs dedicated to the revolutionary leader
• David Collard on Three Songs of Lenin and WH Auden (2009, 11 mins)
• Simon Callow reads WH Auden’s verses from Three Songs of Lenin (2009, 4 mins)
• Alternative Three Songs of Lenin subtitles incorporating WH Auden’s verses