Man with a movie camera

Vertov is famous for his phrase "kino-eye" (which Manovich subsequently spins to "kino-brush", in light of digital technologies). I could not watch Man With A Movie Camera without this phrase going through my head, over and over:

- the steadfast, unrelenting kino-eye, watching the impossible profundities of life - marriage, divorce, birth, death;

- the still, inexorable kino-eye, watching the extreme movements which Vertov both films and cuts: the sheer movement of the sporting events, the slow-motion of the hurdling, the galloping of the horse (Muybridge's horse, of course - stilled with all four hooves off the ground).

Yet, the eye blinks, chops, disrupts: the deliberately fast cutting, faster than the eye can follow. There is no narration in this film - you are assaulted by sheer image and sequence. Movement and stillness, all in one: the last half-minute of the film says it all, so powerful even without narrative structure or story-line; it is pure emotion. Such is the inherent contradiction of the kino-eye, its power, its dispassion, its immobility. This kino-eye indeed says: "Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself."

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)