This film by Dziga Vertov is one of the key works of the avant-garde cinema, in which the city becomes not merely a backdrop but a living organism, brought together into a single rhythm by the logic of montage.

Filmed in Kyiv, Moscow, and Odesa in 1928–1929, the film encompasses various aspects of urban daily life—from factories and trams to maternity hospitals and recreational areas—creating a dynamic map of the Soviet city. Thousands of residents of these cities are not actors in the traditional sense, but rather elements of the city’s ceaseless movement: workers, athletes, vacationers, and tram passengers—all are incorporated into the general flow of life. The camera captures this movement, transforming urban daily life into a continuous stream of images.

At the same time, the film possesses a pronounced self-reflexivity: it shows the very process of filming, as well as figures associated with its production—cinematographer Mikhail Kaufman and editor Elizaveta Svilova—whose presence and work become part of the film’s cinematic fabric. “The Cinematic Eye” not only captures reality but also constructs it, showing how it is assembled into an image—transforming the film into a reflection on the very act of seeing.

The film became a radical experiment with cinematic language and had a fundamental influence on the development of cinema. 

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