A Sixth Part of the World (1926)

Original title

Шестая часть мира

Directed by

Dziga Vertov

Genre

documentary film, silent film, propaganda film

Country

Soviet Union

Runtime

1h 15m

Rating

6.6 of 10 from 28 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This silent documentary travels across the Soviet Union to show the many different peoples and resources in the country. It uses newsreel footage and intertitles to make a case for unity and building a socialist society.

expansivepropagandisticobservationalrhythmiccelebratoryeducationalutopian

What happens

A Sixth Part of the World (Russian: «Шестая часть мира», romanized: Shestaya Chast Mira) is a 1926 silent film directed by Dziga Vertov and produced by Kultkino (part of Sovkino). Through the travelogue format, it depicted the multitude of Soviet peoples in remote areas of USSR and detailed the entirety of the wealth of the Soviet land. Focusing on cultural and economic diversity, the film is in fact a call for unification in order to build a "complete socialist society". A mix between newsreel and found footage, Vertov edited sequences filmed by eight teams of kinoks (kinoki) during their trips. According to Vertov, the film anticipates the coming of sound films by using a constant "word-radio-theme" in the intertitles. Thanks to A Sixth Part of the World and his following feature The Eleventh Year (1928), Vertov matures his style in which he will excel in his most famous film Man with a Movie Camera (1929). (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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