“Major gaps in [Dziga Vertov’s] biography impede our understanding of how this charismatic cinematic visionary managed, despite the complicated, treacherous, and too often ghastly conditions he lived through, to create important works that continue to fascinate and provoke viewers to this day. What has been lacking is a well-researched, large-scale biography as the basis for a comprehensive assessment of Vertov’s career. John MacKay, one of the most sophisticated contemporary students of Russian cinema, proves himself to be an ideal scholar to have taken on such an ambitious project. … With the possible exception of Simon Callow’s multi-volume biography of Orson Welles, I can recall nothing comparable in the field of cinema studies. If the other two parts of MacKay's trilogy equal the intellectual standard he has established in this first book, then only some of the great, multivolume literary biographies such as Joseph Frank’s Dostoyevsky or, more recently, Rainer Stach’s lauded account of Franz Kafka's life might arguably count as its peers.” —Stuart Liebman, Cineaste
“What would [Dziga Vertov] have made of today’s
instantaneous media and the so-called post-truth era? Do these media divide or
unite? Mackay alerts us to these questions. He is deeply invested in the
ideological contours of Vertov’s project, in the fate of left-wing thought in
the twentieth century, and its relevance for the future. His forensic gaze on
the heterogeneous and complex era that shaped Vertov reveals its ‘wrenching
confrontations of utopian possibility with violent closure, radical hope with radical
fear’.” —Emma Widdis, University of Cambridge, The Times Literary Supplement
“The sheer hard work that has gone into researching and writing this exceptional volume is evident, but so too is MacKay’s enjoyment of this task. His enthusiasm for his subject is both palpable and infectious, as is his curiosity. There is something for every reader in this treasure trove of a book, and we should be grateful that its publisher allowed MacKay the space to include everything that he wanted to include. It has enabled him to write a definitive account of the origins of the extraordinary filmmaker Dziga Vertov, which also makes a major contribution to our understanding of Russian and Soviet cinema, history and culture more broadly.”
—Rachel Morley, UCL SSEES, Slavonic and East European Review
