Review - “Man with a movie camera”

I was lucky enough to visit an ODEON cinema where for the first time of my life I experienced watching a silent film. The whole atmosphere – black and white picture supported by familiar music written by soviet composers, made a great impact on me. I really enjoyed the movie, even though I think it was a bit long. However, I couldn’t find a lot of people who got the same impression. From what I heard the majority of students considered “Man with a movie camera” to be very boring. I think it is because those students have an extremely limited knowledge of the USSR’s history and that’s why they were not able to refer events taken place in the movie with a political situation of the USSR in 1930s.

As I am from Ukraine I am going to give my own opinion based on knowledge of historical events of those period.

The main purpose of “Man with a movie camera” is to show an everyday life of such cities as Odessa, Kiev, Kharkov and Moscow and nothing more, because censorship didn’t allow showing anything, which can influence people’s opinion. In this film there are two main characters – the set of people and the city and “man with a movie camera”, who is filming this totality. On the one hand there is an object, on the other – “a movie-eye”. The relationships between them define the contents of the film. A man with a movie camera showing to the viewer how the city wakes up, lives during the day and goes to sleep. He is in the heart of life - breathing, hearing, catches the rhythms of the city and people. Camera in the hands of a man is not only a device of fixation of life, but also its main member.

I was amazed by Vertov’s montage; his kaleidoscope of shots birth-wedding-death was literally leading myself to epilepsy. After a premier in 1929 a lot of people criticized him for really speedy shots. But as for me, being a part of a new generation growing by watching MTV shows nothing can be faster. I think there was a perfect combination of slow and fast speed shots in the film. While watching a movie I could recognize the street in Kiev where I live and I saw some architectural pieces which are now gone, as they were destroyed during the World War II.

If to review this movie from historical point of view, I must say that it is full of lies and fake. David Kaufmann (also known as Dziga Vertov) as many other writers and directors didn’t have a freedom of speech; he wasn’t allowed to show a real situation, as he was watched by the Russian government. The film is showing a daily life, people seem to be happy and everything is making viewers to believe that they live in a perfect country. However, in Ukraine 1929 is known as a “year of a great change”. In 1929 the forced collectivization of agriculture was launched which lead to impoverishment of dozen millions of people which followed by repressions and the Holodomor (great famine of 1932-1933) when 4 millions of Ukrainians where dead. In 2006 Ukrainian government officially recognized the Holodomor as genocide against Ukrainian people.

However, “Man with a movie camera” will forever remain in art as an example of unquenchable enthusiasm of the creator and, finally, for viewers it will never lose its topicality.

Proposal for FMP. Performance space

I am really glad that after studying A-levels I decided to do a Foundation course, because it completely changed my approach to all sort of projects. I became more organized, start to produce work on a daily basis, learnt how to do research and utilize all this information for my projects.

I’ve been doing different sorts of performing arts since very young. I started with gymnastics and acrobatics. At the age of 8 I got into choreography school, where I finished a classical and ethnic dance course. Once while talking with one of my tutors, I mentioned that I spent majority of my life dancing, so she suggested using this for my FMP. I think if I base my FMP on something that inspires me then it will be easier and more interesting to work on it. Recently I visited Royal Albert Hall, where I saw Totem performing by Cirque du Soleil. Artists, music, decorations, performance space and computer graphics made a profound impact on me.

In my FMP I want to explore how a performing space can improve a performance. For example, in Totem there was a special platform that was a major character of the show, because it could adjust to any scene with the help of projections and also its pop up structure. For my research, I plan to visit some dancing studios and performance spaces in London. I also intend to research on a human body movement, because I am thinking to create a space, which derives from forms of body movement. I recently visited John Pawson – Plain Space in Design Museum, where I saw a movie about his design of a dancing space in Italy. His design was as simple and clean as dancers’ movements.  I think I will experiment with medium and shapes, in order to find the most appropriate one. For resources I will look through the evolution of a performing space from Opera Houses to modern ones.  I might also further analyze structure of the human body, look through encyclopaedia and images. Flat-pack Christmas project and Seeds Dispersal were my favourite projects so far. So, I am planning to apply knowledge and skills from those projects to my FMP. In, my opinion, in Christmas project I solved the main problem of a pop out structure successfully and I am very proud of my final piece. As for Seeds Dispersal, I think my research worked very well with the final idea and I did a lot of experiments with medium and materials. I don’t have a final idea yet, but my project will be definitely about creating a performance space.

As part of my evaluation I will keep a blog, which will be updated almost on a daily basis, to show my working process, as well as a journal, which will be used as a reflection of the things that inspire me. I also will encourage my classmates to make some comments on my work and will be open for any type of a constructive criticism.

Molecule Project - Bone structures

As soon as we were briefed for molecule project I went to the Natural History Museum to look at different sort of DNA structures. In the museum I came across the section with dinosaurs' bones, which drawn my attention. As, a project was self-directed I decided to move from seed dispersal to bones. With my class I also visited molecule house in White Chapel, which also had structures similar to rib cage. I didn't aim to do a final outcome, but I did several test models. I experimented a lot with materials and textures. Molecule and Reuse-remake-reinvent were my favorite projects from the whole 3d and spatial rotation and I am going to bring all those ideas and techniques and develop them further into my FMP.

Union Street - URBAN PROJECT

For me Urban Project was the most difficult so far. Maybe christmas break influenced it, because we started really early 4th Feb (and in my country NY is a big celebration, then we have Orthodox Christmas on the 7th Jan and also old NY on the 13th Jan), so my mind was still absorbed with holidays. However, I had to start this project. In my opinion, my A3 research book was very exciting. I combined photographs with drawing, looked at solids, voids, different types of textures. I think it helped me to understand more about the site. After sketchbook, I started to do sketch models. I had several ideas to develop. At first, I wanted to do a simple rectangular shape in the style of 60s. Then I looked through my research, visited site again and  decided to work towards round shapes as there were a lot of arches, I decided my model to repeat it as well. As for materials I was thinking of glass, but in the brief it was said that structure should be temporary, that's why I decided to use wood instead, as there was a lot of wood on the site.

My tutor didn't like my final outcome, that's why I am not confident about my final piece anymore. Even though I spent so much time on my model. I learnt from this project a lot. One of the most important things, I started to pay a lot of attention to proportions. My model is 100 smaller than original (1 cm = 1m).

Pop in, Pop out - XMAS project

For my research I went to Regent street and was looking at different structures as well as shop windows. I found an interesting flat-pack structure in the shape of snowflake at the REISS shop window.

So, I decided to use the idea of 3d paper structures for my project. I researched different tutorials for origami making and then created my own structure, which looks like two pyramids (also reminds me of christmas trees).

Basically, I drew a layout and did some vertical scalpel cuts and folded some parts in or out. I am really happy with my final outcome, I think it is very relevant to the given brief and I responded to it in m own way. I was trying to do luxuries retail space and I think it was successful.