GEETAM 2004 MODULES

evocation and symbolic creation of nation through filmic enunciation. This poetic persona of the intertitles of a sixth part of the worldresembles that of mayakovsky or whitman, but it is also a further development of film as rhetoric. In fact, like forward, soviet! The filmends with a speech. It is a quotation from stalin s central committee report at the fourteenth congress of the communist party indecember in which he expounded the argument for building socialism in one country. In vertov s hands stalin slumbering speechbecomes pithy and colourful. In reducing a word speech to just words, vertov also changes the order of elements and employs liberalparaphrase. Nevertheless, the thrust is true to stalin s message of socialism in one country. If this is poetic film, it is not by analogy withlyrical poetry. A sixth part of the world not only uses the person form but also addresses a number of groups, including theaudience, as you : you that are sitting in this auditorium. This too enhances our sense of the film as oratory, as a speech delivered to animmediate audience, again characteristic of mayakovsky and whitman. At the same time, it draws attention to the film s palpability asfilm, and reminds the spectator that he or she is viewing a film. This kind of reflexivity, where art reminds us it is art, is also sometimesseen as being characteristic of poetry, particularly by the russian form alists. There can be no question that vertov in this film seeks todraw our attention on a number of occasions to the fact that we are watching a film. This ongoing theme in vertov s work culminated inhis film about film, man with a movie camera,yet such reflexivity had been an element in vertov s film-making practice for most of thecine-pravda period issues and show film projection and cineeye intercuts shots of an eye with images of a mental patient. This reflexivecharacter of vertov s work serves as a model for what has been called metacinema, a cinema that questions its own processes ofrepresentation, as a model in turn for a society that questions and transforms itself. However, this reflexivity is by no means unique topoetry. Consequently, the claim than the film is poetic is made primarily on account of its structure, the way in which the shots arelinked, and the effect this has upon the spectator. Typical of such claims is shklovsky, in common: both weaken horizontal, narrativestructures to invite comparison of their items as similar. It is not a great leap from a listing of items in a similar category to the poeticcomparison of unexpectedly similar things. A given device cannot be exclusive to the style of documentary or of poetry. The differencelies in the purpose to which the device is put. Vertov s listing of the various nationalities in the second section of a sixth part of theworld creates a powerful sense of the diversity of the ussr. At the same time these disparate elements are united as owners of their land.Whitman s catalogue of ethnicities in salut aumonde ! Similarly ends in an assertion, in this case of the equality and legitimacy of allnations. The naming and description of the various peoples still contribute to the film s argument. The end result is not a dry listing orcataloguing, not simply an inventory of peoples, but, rather, the evocation of a seething panoply of ethnic difference united in commonideological aim. The argument is also strengthened by the sheer scope of the material with which it is illustrated. Catalogue andargument structure the film through dynamic tension, yet from the middle of the catalogue it may seem that we are being asked to seeonly analogical rather than logical connections, and thus that the film s sole purpose is poetic. The higher picture, however, is one oflogical argument and persuasion. This single section of the film and its argument occupy a very definite place within a judiciouslyconceived, overarching expositional frame. A simplistic paraphrase of the underlying structure of a sixth part of the world clearlyillustrates the methodical nature of the argument that it presents. Capitalism is based on inequality and oppression. The rich am usethemselves, while workers and colonized people s labor is exploited, be it mechanized or manual. By contrast, the diverse peoples ofthe ussr are rulers of their land. They produce a great variety of goods from their land. They export these goods by a range of means.Even this traditional saami produces furs that are exported to buy machines to build socialism. There are many backward peoples inthe ussr, but exports enable them to progress in cultural, economic and political terms. As stalin argued, this will enable the ussr toproduce machines that build machines, freeing the country from economic dependency on the west, and helping to free all the peoplesof the world from capitalism. Put like this, the film s highly structured argument becomes evident, but it seems less interesting. A majorreason for this is that the incredible diversity of its catalogue of predominantly ethnographic images are what make a sixth part of theworld visually striking. In making this expeditionary or ethnographic film, vertov is deliberately engaging with an already markedtradition in documentary film-making. He does so in an incredibly knowing way, to the extent of incorporating footage from robertflaherty s pioneering ethnographic documentary nanook of the north. As with flaherty s film, vertov photographed the material inexpeditions, in his case a series of expeditions conducted by at least eight cameramen all over the soviet union. But, whereas thetendency in flaherty, and more generally, is to seek out and record ethnographic difference for its intrinsic interest, vertov is using theseimages to create an image of a nation. yet the contrast lies not only in the use made of the images recorded but also in the approach tothe organizing of expeditions. These are relatively short, targeted trips, where vertov s primary role consists in dispatching his cine-eyeswith clear written instructions as to the kinds of material he wanted. Whereas flaherty, a professional explorer first and foremost, sawnanook of the north as growing form the expeditions, from an immersion in the local culture, Vertov sends his team sun short journeysof a month or so just long enough to get enough footage to fill out the bigger picture. Concomitantly, he does not intend to achieve trueand deep insight into the cultures of the various peoples of the soviet union, nor an image of ethnic difference that is arresting orchallenging for more than a moment. This marks a sixth part of the world out from most of the soviet exploration films that followed it,and especially from the work of the ethnographic film-maker vladmir erofeev, for whom ethnography was an end in itself facilitatedby film. While it has been argued that vertov emphasizes the difference of these cultures from each other rather than their differencefrom developed moscow, they are ultimately made emblematic of a perceived backwardness, which the film suggests developedsocialism will erase. Flaherty s nanook bites the edge of a gramophone disc, but vertov s saami samoedy listen to the sound of lenin s voice on one. This may be seen as an implicit polemic with flaherty s romantic elegy for traditional inuit ways. While a sixth part of theworld s camerawork pays passing tribute to these peoples, they are ultimately to be civilized and sovietised by the socialist society theirpelts help develop. The importance of fur exports in the film is curious, in that it is hardly a crucial economic imperative of the time.Yet this image serves to evoke the flaccid decadence of the west, symbolized by women wearing and adoring their houses with deadanimals. At the same time, the film claims these items of fashion are obtained by trade with the soviet union. As with jazz and thecolonies, the bourgeoisie exploit ethnic difference to satisfy their appetite for am usement and luxury. The difference here is that thisexploitation is aiding the development of the soviet union, a beacon of inspiration to such peoples the world over. Unsurprisingly thefilm was little use in promoting trade and economic cooperation. Part of the problem was that it set about trying to persuade a sovietspectator that foreign trade was a good thing and could serve socialistends, becoming to political, too closely tied to internal sovietdebates. Vertov had little idea how to appeal to the foreign capitalist and made little serious effort. This was a factor in his losing hisjob, but the debate provoked in the film press was even more significant as it suggested the inadequacy of existing film genres andcategories for a description of the film. In addition to being structured as an argument, a sixth part of the world possesses a journalistictopicality and focus on the burning issues of the day. While forward, soviet, made as part of an election campaign, is obviously topical,it may not be immediately obvious to modern spectators that a sixth part of the world was no less topical. Yet the emergent theme of

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