Next to the classic Man with a Movie Camera, his "film poem" to the founder of the Soviet Union, Three Songs of Lenin, is the most universally acclaimed and enduringly popular of all Dziga Vertov's films. This 2-disc set presents the earliest surviving versions of Three Songs of Lenin, the 1938 silent and sound reissues, previously unavailable on home video. Also included are the two Lenin-themed editions of Vertov's Kinopravda newsreel series as well as a feature-length TV documentary about Vertov by Austrian Film Museum co-founder Peter Konlechner.
The films
Tri pesni o Lenine (Three songs of Lenin) - USSR 1934/35 - Directed and written by: Dziga Vertov - Assistant: Elizaveta Svilova - Photographed by: Dimitrij Surenski, Mark Magidson, Boris Monastyrskij - Music by: Jurij Shaporin - Produced by: Meshrabpom-Film, Moscow - Premiere: November 1, 1934
Kinopravda No. 21 - Leninskaja kinopravda - USSR 1925 - Directed by: Dziga Vertov - Photographed by: Grigarij Giber, Aleksandr Levickij, Aleksandr Lemberg, Petr Novickij, Michail Kaufman, Eduard Tissé - Produced by: Kultkino, Moskau - Premiere: January 22, 1925
Kinopravda No. 22 - V serdce krestjanina Lenin ziv - USSR 1925 - Directed by: Dziga Vertov - Photographed by: Michail Kaufman, Aleksandr Lemberg, Ivan Beljakov - Edited by: Elizaveta Svilova - Produced by: Kultkino, Moscow - Premiere: March 26, 1925
Dziga Vertov - RFA 1974 - Directed and written by: Peter Kohnlechner - Photographed by: Walter Kindler, Michael Epp - Produced by: Norddeutscher Rundfunk - First release
DVD features (2-disc DVD set)
DVD 1
- Tri pesni o Lenine Sound version 1934, 64'
- Tri pesni o Lenine Silent version 1935, 52'
- 20 page bilingual booklet
DVD 2
- Dziga Vertov 1974, 54'
- Kinopravda No. 21 1925, 43'
- Kinopravda No. 22 1925, 19'
- Rare footage of Elizaveta Svilova during her first trip to Vienna in May 1970
Edited by: Österreichisches Filmmuseum, Wien, and Filmmuseum München in collaboration with Gosfilmofond, Moscow, and RGAKFD, Krasnogorsk
DVD authoring: Tobias Dressel
DVD supervision: Oliver Hanley, Adelheid Heftberger
First edition December 2014
