man with a movie camera

this is the 1929 silent era classic documentary by dziga vertov that i finally saw completely today after one earlier failed attempt. the modern city is perpetually in motion with the movement of gears and steamships, of printing presses and trams criss-crossing the streets and the screen. it is also a place where the ideal perfect bodies find leisure sunbathing on the beach, or poised in stillness as they leap like horses over hurdles or throw javelins for sport. it’s a propaganda film for a new world told as a pseudo narrative of a process of documentation by a man with a move camera. a frame within a frame. the city of the present (a projected future) pulsates, alive and buzzing with connections, networks, voices; throbbing with a vitality highlighted by the over analysed montage technique, double exposures, fast motion/ slow motion portions, the animation. all very fine for the machine like modern city, but what form should the act of documentation - rhetorical or represenational- be for our city today?