ABSTRACT
After its release in 1926, Moscow was embraced by opponents of the films of Dziga Vertov and his group of kinoks, even though it had been made by two members of the group: Mikhail Kaufman, Vertov's brother and cameraman, and Ilya Kopalin. After describing Kaufman and Kopalin's city symphony, this chapter argues that there are differences between it and Vertov's films that were genuinely important to Vertov's detractors given their ideological and aesthetic commitments and that, at least in part, motivated their positive reaction to Moscow. Kaufman was Vertov's cameraman, the cinematography of Man with a Movie Camera is highly reminiscent of Moscow's to the extent that some shots look identical. Man with a Movie Camera contains an almost identical sequence, except that a disorienting hand-held camera is used to convey drunkenness. Moscow, in other words, is very much about the city of Moscow, its geography, the work and leisure activities of its inhabitants, and its political institutions.
