Underplayed Gems

A Sixth Part of the World (1926)

A Sixth Part of the World poster
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
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

More films like this

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)

More like this

This page is from Underplayed Gems. Not quite it? You can browse by genre, country and year, or take this one into the 3D catalogue and ask the Catbot for something closer.