The Eleventh Year (1928)
A documentary tribute to the tenth anniversary of Soviet Ukraine, tracing the construction of the massive Dnieper hydroelectric dam alongside archaeologists uncovering ancient Scythian tombs on the same land.
The Eleventh Year was Dziga Vertov’s dry run for the editing techniques he would refine a year later in Man with a Movie Camera, using the Dnieper dam project to stage his ideal of the camera as an instrument of pure observation rather than staged drama.
Background
Vertov made this in Ukraine for the state film organisation VUFKU, after leaving Sovkino in Moscow. The film marks ten years of Soviet Ukraine, and its centrepiece is the construction of the Dnieper hydroelectric station, one of the largest engineering projects in the country. His brother Mikhail Kaufman shot it and his wife Elizaveta Svilova edited it, the same team that made Man with a Movie Camera the following year.
What to watch for
Watch for the way Vertov cuts between the construction site and the archaeologists’ dig, linking the region’s ancient past to its industrial future. Explosions, cranes and rushing water are edited with a rhythm close to music, and Vertov’s fondness for fast montage is already fully developed. It is a work of state propaganda, but the camera work, especially from high vantage points over the site, is striking, and it shows how Vertov turned an official commission into experimental cinema.
