Database Concepts in “Man with a Movie Camera” Film Essay

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Lev Manovich’s ideas about the nature and specifics of new media have received high interest of publicity and researchers. Manovich’s theory about the crucial role of a database in the development of new media finds a direct proof in the famous movie “Man with a movie camera” that amazes the viewer with its innovativeness and unique structure.

Most of the ideas about the dominating role of a database described by Manovich are based on the assumption that modern culture has gone through the process of heavy computerization, which made it reliable on the concepts guiding computer culture – database and algorithm.

According to Manovich, such changes were inevitable, and the narrative form was doomed to be replaced by a database form. The author explains that while narrative form suggests a set sequence of items, database unites the items of equal significance and encourages the user to put them in the chosen sequence (Manovich, 2000, p. 176). Such specific feature of a database defines the face of new media and modern culture, which tend to neglect the form of a story having the defined beginning and end.

Manovich describes “Man with a movie camera” as a perfect example of the language of new media based on a database concept (Manovich, 2001, p. 237). This movie created in the 1920s fits Manovich’s ideas and illustrates how they are reflected in art. The movie depicts a series of events of an everyday life of the citizens of the Soviet Union of the beginning of the twentieth century. The movie resembles a database as it presents a number of numerous pieces of information that are not ordered according to any sequence. The movie resembles more an encyclopedia of life of Soviet people than a typical narrative used in the movies.

The scenes include a wide variety of events: the birth of a child, a wedding, leisure activities, funeral, work at the factory, an arrival of the ship, etc. (Undervoid, 2012). Dziga Vertov’s innovative approach to the creation of the film can be illustrated by the fact that the heroes depicted in the film are real people that have no acting experience.

Except for several scenes that seem to be staged, most events depicted in the movie were filmed in the real environment without any script and actors. Another striking feature of the film is the way how it was edited. Instead of ordering the filmed shots according to the developed script that is written prior to the beginning of filming, the creators of “Man with a movie camera” ordered the shots according to their vision of how to reveal the explored events in the best way without using a previously prepared script.

One more feature that amazes the viewer of the movie is the number of montage effects and cinematic techniques used by Dziga Vertov in the time when other movies were very simple. The use of extreme close-ups, freeze frames, jump cuts, and many other techniques that were invented or developed by the author of the movie makes the film a unique piece of cinematography that presents a huge range of innovations that were not typical for the time of its creation. I think that such innovations combined with the absence of typical narrative present in other films make “Man with a movie camera” a unique piece of art demonstrating the specifics of new media foreseen by Dziga Vertov.

The analysis of Manovich’s ideas and their embodiment in “Man with a movie camera” reveal that the dominance of database form can be considered a natural consequence of the computerization of the culture and new media.

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IvyPanda. 2021. "Database Concepts in “Man with a Movie Camera” Film." March 30, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/database-concepts-in-man-with-a-movie-camera-film/.

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IvyPanda. "Database Concepts in “Man with a Movie Camera” Film." March 30, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/database-concepts-in-man-with-a-movie-camera-film/.

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