The camera spins all over everywhere?

April 18, 2007 7:54 AM

I'm trying to remember information about an experimental film, possibly Russian, most likely from the first half of the 20th century, and neither google nor my memory are offering much help. The key element is that the artist built something like a tripod, but with the capability of full, spherical rotation of the camera, 360 degrees around all possible axes.

I think the complex movement of the camera was controlled by motors, but it could have been by hand. I might be misremembering, but I think the film made using this device involved setting up the contraption on top of a grassy hill and letting it run for the full duration of a roll or magazine of film. I think at no point do you see a human being or a mechanical device within the frame. Any help?

posted by nobody to media & arts (4 comments total)

Sounds a little like Vertov, but not any scene I recall.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 8:51 AM on April 18, 2007

I'm wondering if you are not thinking of Michael Snow's La Region Centrale? It is from the 1970s and he is Canadian, not Russian, but it sounds like the film you are describing. You can read a little about it and see the apparatus Snow developed for the film here and here.
posted by pasici at 9:00 AM on April 18, 2007

Thanks! Definitely Michael Snow.
posted by nobody at 11:11 AM on April 18, 2007

My girlfriend says it is Dziga Vertov. She thinks it might be Man With A Camera or Three Songs of Lenin made in 1929 and 1934 respectively.
posted by JJ86 at 4:12 PM on April 18, 2007