Leo Tolstoy and Dziga Vertov: A Double Portrait in the Interior of the Epoch

In 1910, when Leo Tolstoy died, Dziga Vertov was an unknown 14-year-old boy from Byalistok. Tolstoy couldn’t be aware of either the name, or the films made by Vertov, who developed the concept of a documentary as high art. The film is made as a parallel movement of artistic motivations, outlooks on life and biographies of the two artists. Vertov in his best films, such as “Kino-Glaz”, “The Donbass Symphony”, “A Man with a Movie-Camera”, etc., followed the basic aesthetic principles of Leo Tolstoy and brought the traditions of the Russian classical literature to the screen.