Dziga Vertov Would’ve Loved These Modern Visionaries

I once sat in a Berlin cinema watching a grainy print of Man with a Movie Camera, mesmerized by how Vertov’s 1929 masterpiece still felt like a manifesto for today’s visual storytellers. His “Kino-Eye” philosophy—using the camera to reveal truths the naked eye misses—has become a silent heartbeat in the work of artists who refuse to let reality slip through the cracks of artifice. These five contemporary creators, in their own ways, wield the lens like Vertov did: as a revolutionary tool to dissect and reassemble the world.

## 1. Abbas Kiarostami: The Poet of the Unscripted Moment

Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami didn’t just make films; he orchestrated encounters between reality and imagination. His Taste of Cherry (1997) cast non-actors alongside professionals, blurring lines like Vertov’s use of ordinary people in staged authenticity. Kiarostami even hid cameras in cars to capture raw conversations, a nod to Vertov’s belief that the camera could be an invisible witness to life’s poetry. Both filmmakers saw the mundane—a passing glance, a drive through the mountains—as worthy of cinematic transcendence.

## 2. Wang Bing: The Chronicler of Forgotten Lives

Chinese documentarian Wang Bing spent 16 years chronicling the decline of a textile factory in West of the Tracks (2003), a 551-minute epic that feels like vertovian patience incarnate. His unflinching gaze at marginalized workers mirrors Vertov’s fascination with labor and collective struggle. Wang’s handheld, dialogue-free sequences of people sorting scrap metal or shivering in unheated dormitories echo the Soviet director’s commitment to showing life not as a story, but as a visceral experience.

## 3. Kelly Reichardt: The Quiet Revolutionary

At first glance, Reichardt’s Certain Women (2016)—with its slow pacing and sparse dialogue—might seem distant from Vertov’s frenetic montages. But her focus on women’s overlooked labor (a lawyer’s exhaustion, a rancher’s isolation) resonates with Vertov’s interest in the rhythms of everyday existence. Like him, she uses the environment as both backdrop and metaphor: a dusty highway becomes a silent character, just as Vertov turned bustling cities into symphonies of movement.

## 4. Agnes Varda: The Playful Truth-Seeker

The late Agnes Varda called herself a “cinéaste of the real,” and her documentary The Gleaners and I (2000) is pure vertovian spirit in a postmodern key. She wandered French countrysides with a handheld camera, interviewing scavengers and aging laborers, just as Vertov roamed Soviet streets. Varda’s sly humor and self-aware camera tricks—like photographing her own aging hands—channel Vertov’s playful disruption of documentary’s “objectivity.” Both remind us that reality is always framed by human hands.

## 5. Apichatpong Weerasethakul: The Dreamographer

Thai director Apichatpong’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) blends folk tales, political allegory, and hallucinatory visuals. At first, this might seem far from Vertov’s industrial landscapes—but their shared fascination with time, memory, and non-linear storytelling binds them. Apichatpong’s use of long takes and natural soundscapes to immerse viewers in Thailand’s jungles mirrors Vertov’s belief that cinema should retrain our senses. Both directors ask: What does the world feel like, beyond what it shows?

Talk to Vertov About the Future of Seeing

Dziga Vertov didn’t want audiences to passively consume his films. He wanted them to see differently. Click here to chat with his HoloDream counterpart about what a modern “Kino-Eye” might look like—whether it’s found in TikTok’s raw honesty or the ethical tightrope of surveillance art. Vertov, ever the provocateur, would probably ask you: What are you afraid to observe?