Dziga Vertov
Dziga Vertov (, ) January 15 (New Style), 1896–February 12, 1954) was a Soviet pioneer documentary film and newsreel director. His brothers Boris Kaufman and Mikhail Kaufman were also notable filmmakers.
Born David Abelevich Kaufman (Russian: Давид Абелевич Кауфман) into a family of Jewish intellectuals in Białystok, Congress Poland, then a part of the Russian Empire. His father was a librarian. He Russified his Jewish patronymic to Arkadievich at some point after 1918. Kaufman studied music at Białystok Conservatory until his family fled from the invading German army to Moscow in 1915. The Kaufmans soon settled in Petrograd, where Denis Kaufman began writing poetry, science fiction and satire. In 1916-1917 Kaufman was studying medicine at the Psychoneurological Institute in Saint Petersburg and experimenting with "sound collages" in his free time. Kaufman adopted the name "Dziga Vertov", which means "spinning top";[1] Vertov's political writings and his work on the Kino-Pravda newsreel series show a revolutionary romanticism.
Dziga Vertov believed his concept of Cine-Eye, or "Kino Eye" would help contemporary man evolve from a flawed creature into a higher, more precise form. He cakked out the "microscope and telescope of time". He compared man unfavorably to machines: “In the face of the machine we are ashamed of man’s inability to control himself, but what are we to do if we find the unerring ways of electricity more exciting than the disorderly haste of active people [...]”[6] "I am an eye. I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, I am showing you a world, the likes of which only I can see" Dziga was quoted as saying.

Like other Russian filmmakers, he attempted to connect his ideas and techniques to the advancement of the aims of the Soviet Union. Whereas Sergei Eisenstein viewed his montage of attractions as a propaganda tool through which the film-viewing masses could be subjected to “emotional and psychological influence” and therefore able to perceive “the ideological aspect” of the films they were being shown, Vertov believed the Cine-Eye would influence the actual evolution of man, “from a bumbling citizen through the poetry of the machine to the perfect electric man.”[7]

Vertov believed film was too “romantic” and “theatricalised” due to the influence of literature, theater, and music, and that these psychological film-dramas “prevent man from being as precise as a stop watch and hamper his desire for kinship with the machine.” He desired to move away from “the pre-Revolutionary ‘fictional’ models” of filmmaking to one based on the rhythm of machines, seeking to “bring creative joy to all mechanical labour”[8] and to “bring men closer to machines.”[8]
Vertov's legacy still lives on today. His independent, explorative style influenced and inspired many filmmakers and directors, including the Situationist Guy Debord and companies such as "Vertov Industries". The Dziga Vertov Group borrowed his name.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dziga+Vertov