Man with a Movie Camera + Statues Also Die

Statues Also Die (1953)
Dirs. Alain Resnais, Chris Marker & Ghislain Cloquet, 30min, digital
In French with English subtitles

“When men die, they become history. Once statues die, they become art. This botany of death is what we call culture,” claims the narrator of this stunning visual essay. A collaborative work helmed by Chris Marker and Alain Resnais, the film was commissioned by the Paris-based Pan-African publishing giant Présence Africaine. A surrealist-inflected examination of African statues turns into a searing critique of colonialism and European museums, leading the film to be censored and banned in France.

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Man with a Movie Camera (1929)
Dir. Dziga Vertov, 67min, DCP

One of the most innovative and influential works of documentary, Dziga Vertov’s The Man with the Movie Camera takes a humorous, kaleidoscopic ride through Soviet cities while drawing parallels between the moviemaker and the factory laborer and exposing the filmmaking process. Making use of all filming strategies then available—including superimposition, split screens, and varied speed—Vertov created a revolution in cinematic art with his defiant deconstruction of dramatic norms. “We proclaim the old films, based on the romance, theatrical films and the like, to be . . . mortally dangerous! Contagious!” he stated. Like others of his generation, Vertov believed that the creation of an objective “cinema eye” (or kino-glaz) would, in destroying old habits of viewing, help build a new proletarian society.