Man with a Movie Camera (2025)
Director(s): Esteban Alarcón, Hank Allen, Breeding Castle, Melissa Cha, Crisis Acting, Dana Dawud, Kayla Drzewicki, Gavin Dubois, Andrea Florens, Janelle Howerton, Levels of Nuance, Tanner D. Masseth, Emma Murray, Jose Perez, Progga, Abbey Pusz, Redacted Cut, Blake Robbins, Max Rooney, Paranoia State, Twee Whistler, Elijah Valter, Jay Villalobos, and Brian Wiebe
Film description: Man with a Movie Camera (2025) is a collectively authored cut-for-cut remake of the 1929 film of the same name through the lens of internet-based aesthetics. Drawing a lineage from the experiments of Soviet montage to contemporary trends such as sludge content, desktop documentary, corecore, and database cinema, Man with a Movie Camera (2025) attempts to reinvigorate the popular avant-garde project of a universal cinematic language which was originally developed almost a century ago by Dziga Vertov and The Kinoks.
Screening after: 1-Day Adult
ERIC SAYS Nearly one hundred years after Dziga Vertov’s silent masterpiece Man With a Movie Camera’s exponentially accelerated film language, a loose collective of decentralized filmmakers and artists in the realism of contemporary video, memes, and new-media have produced a remake—sort of. Working with the guideline that all filmmakers must match the rhythm of the cuts in Vertov’s film exactly, with three filmmakers collaborating remotely on each triptych segment, they’ve wielded found footage to produce something mesmerizing, new, and at times jaw-dropping.
Man with a Movie Camera (2025) gave me a deeply engaging viewing experience, as I expect it will to you. The film unleashes a staggering cavalcade of images that verges on the overwhelming, yet never feels haphazard or without intention. Each viewer—if they give themselves and the film the gift of engagement—will find themselves making wholly original connections between the frames in ways that can be inspiring, hilarious, and meditative all at once.
It’s a work that pushes the form forward while saluting how progressive and innovative Vertov’s original remains. This exciting project also boasts two filmmakers of local note involved in its production: Baltimorean Abbey Pusz and ex-pat Theresa Tomi Faison, whose Application to Be Lars Von Trier’s Female Girlfriend/Muse screened in New/Next 2024. (Eric Allen Hatch)
Producer(s): Tanner D. Masseth & Blake Robbins
Editor(s): Tanner D. Masseth
Country of origin: USA
Language: English
Year: 2025
Duration: 67 min
Premiere status: Maryland Premiere
