Dziga VERTOV
Дзига ВЕРТОВ
Dziga VERTOV
USSR, 1937, 1622m 
Black and white, documentary
Kolybelnaya
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Колыбельная

 

 Lullaby

 Berceuse

 
Directed by : Dziga VERTOV (Дзига ВЕРТОВ)
Writing credits : Dziga VERTOV (Дзига ВЕРТОВ)
Cinematography : Dmitry SURENSKY (Дмитрий СУРЕНСКИЙ)
Music : Daniil POKRAS (Даниил ПОКРАСС), Dmitry POKRASS (Дмитрий ПОКРАСС)
Editing : Dziga VERTOV (Дзига ВЕРТОВ)
Companies : Soyouzkinokhronika
 

Plot synopsis
Lullaby poses the question: what is happiness? Its responses are motherhood and October, shown as opening up all paths to women's development. In order to convince us of this not terribly self-evident association, the film uses a range of means to associate joyous motherhood with the revolution. In essence, the method employed is a development of the earlier documentary approach. The ongoing importance of documentary reference for the film is clear from the many drafts for the scenario, where initially the main characters had real prototypes and were named. However, this was increasingly allied to the idea of the film as a song. One version of the scenario describes the film in the following terms:
The plan I am submitting is
the plan for a musical
and poetical
and graphic and
documentary
work.

The words of the eponymous song sung by Soviet mothers to their children are the first and most straightforward way of linking motherhood and October :
Joy in October rose above the Earth.
Sleep, my little girl, sleep.
Joy is rocking with you in the cradle.
Sleep, my little girl, sleep.
Jeremy Hicks Dziga Vertov defining Documenary Film I.B. TAURIS, 2007 (194 pages)
 

commentaries
 
The “subjective” camera in Vertov’s Lullaby (1937) – John MacKay, 2007

Selected in the following festivals or events :
- Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival : IDFA, Amsterdam (Netherlands), 2016
- Festival "Polka. liberated cinema", Moscow (Russia), 2011
- International Film Festival of the Commonwealth Countries "Moscow Premiere", Moscow (Russia), 2008