Exploring the issues of continuity between old and new media, this article focuses on the experimental cinema of Dziga Vertov and analyzes how in his work the Soviet Montage director anticipated some of the techniques of digital media, including those of video games. The study compares Vertov’s omniscient camera eye to the use of the virtual camera and the free-moving viewpoint in video games, investigates how Vertov outlined the principles of interchangeability and interactivity pertinent to contemporary digital media in A Sixth Part of the World, and explains how the database logic of his major montage method reflected the socio-political processes of the new regime. The study explores the tension between totalizing ideology and the utopian liberation of perception in Vertov’s work and the paradoxical effect it has on limitations that cultural production encounters in the age of digital media.

Language of contribution: English

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