Vertov and the Avant-Garde Documentary: Dreaming Reality in the 1960s, from the USSR to Japan.

This article argues that the work of 1920s Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov found especially fertile ground in 1960s Japan, where critics have long discussed ties between documentary and the avant-garde. Theorists interpreted Vertov's filmmaking as fundamentally avant-gardist. That is, it was both an "experiment in a dream" and an "experiment in reality," according to Nakahara Yusuke, rather than the work of a documentarian "catching life unawares." This transnational media ecology results in a strong tradition of experimental documentary that traces revolutionary politics to editing tricks and self-reflexivity. Soviet and Japanese avant-garde documentary emerge independently, and decades apart, yet result in a fascinating confluence of political avant-garde aesthetics that overlaps significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]