Mikhail Kaufman

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Mikhail Abramovich Kaufman (1897-1979; Russian: Михаил Абрамович Кауфман) was a Russian cinematographer and photographer. He was the older brother of notable filmmakers Dziga Vertov (Denis Kaufman) and Boris Kaufman.

He was born into a family of Jewish intellectuals living in Białystok at the time when the Congress Poland was a part of the Russian Empire.

In 1920s, after Mikhail Kaufman returned from Russian Civil War, Vertov offered him to participate in his newsreel series Kino-Pravda as a cameraman.

Mikhail Kaufman directed photography for 1929 film Man with the Movie Camera. The film is built around meta-reference and is full of innovative video effects: in it, Mikhail Kaufman acts as a cameraman and is seen shooting the film while walking on high bridges, hanging off the side of a train, climbing a smokestack and crawling underground with miners - all in order to get the best shot.

Shortly after the filming of Man with the Movie Camera, Kaufman and Vertov fell out over artistic differences. The two would never work together again.

[edit] References

• Petric, Vlada. Constructivism in Film: The Man with a Movie Camera. NY: Cambridge UP, 1987.

[edit] External links

• The Man with a Movie Camera at nottingham.ac.uk
• The man with the movie camera. Speed of vision, speed of truth? by MARKO DANIEL
• Stills from The Man with the Movie [pl:MCamera