- Mikhail Kaufman
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Mikhail Abramovich Kaufman (1897–March 11, 1980); Russian: Михаил Абрамович Кауфман) was a Russian cinematographer and photographer. He was the younger brother of filmmaker Dziga Vertov (Denis Kaufman) and the older brother of cinematographer Boris Kaufman.[1]
He was born into a family of Jewish intellectuals living in Białystok at the time when the Congress Poland was a part of the Russian Empire.
In 1920s, after Mikhail Kaufman returned from Russian Civil War, Vertov offered him to participate in his newsreel series Kino-Pravda as a cameraman.
Mikhail Kaufman directed photography for several films, including the 1929 Man with the Movie Camera. The film is built around meta-reference and is full of innovative visual effects: in it, Kaufman acts as a cameraman and is seen shooting the film while walking on high bridges, hanging off the side of a train, climbing a smokestack and crawling underground with miners – all in order to get the best shot. His brother's wife, Yelizaveta Svilova, was editor and part of the "Council of Three" who "proclaimed a 'death sentence' on the cinema that came before, faulting it for mixing in 'foreign matter' from theater and literature."[2]
Mikhail Kaufman also directed two films: "Moscow" (1927) and "In Spring" (1929). Shortly after the filming of Man with the Movie Camera, Kaufman and Vertov fell out over artistic differences. The two would never work together again.
References
- ^ Petric, Vlada. Constructivism in Film: The Man with a Movie Camera. NY: Cambridge UP, 1987.
- ^ Lim, Dennis (April 8, 2011). Machine Age Poet, Born in Revolution, Stifled Under Stalin. New York Times
External links
- The Man with a Movie Camera at nottingham.ac.uk
- The man with the movie camera. Speed of vision, speed of truth? by MARKO DANIEL
- Stills from The Man with the Movie [pl:MCamera
Categories:- 1897 births
- 1979 deaths
- People from Białystok
- Polish Jews
- Russian Jews
- Soviet cinematographers
- Soviet Jews
- Soviet photographers
- Soviet people stubs
- Polish film biography stubs
- Cinematographer stubs
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