It's often forgotten, but the art of cinema owes its appearance not to directors, but to engineers and inventors. As researchers experimented with chemical solutions and the laws of optics, they created photographic film and the first film cameras. The new entertainment that involved moving images quickly gained popularity, and attracted the interest of enterprising entrepreneurs as a source of quick profit. The first films openly imitated theatre and literature, and might never have abandoned this habit if not for the theory of editing. This invention made cinema an independent and self-sufficient branch of human activity.
It would be no exaggeration to say that the lexicon of editing was something of a revolutionary leap in the evolution of cinema. It's hard to resist the opportunity to mention the development of this phenomenon once again. It's especially important now, considering that the contribution of early Ukrainian cinema to editing has been constantly erased by the Russian imperial discourse, and that the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture and the State Film Agency are now cynically destroying the Dovzhenko Centre, Ukraine's main archival film institution, which has been successfully restoring historical justice.
So, a little history. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the most notable results in editing practices were achieved by filmmakers from two countries: the United States and the Soviet Union. However, their starting conditions were unequal. Unlike Hollywood, which had just blossomed after the First World War, the cinema of the young Soviet Union was in decline. The Communist leadership, after nationalising the existing private film studios, refused to buy expensive equipment or film from abroad. With limited access to film production, Soviet filmmakers focused on research. By rewatching foreign (especially American) films, they analysed how, for example, the meaning changes if the length of a scene is shortened or the order of episodes is changed. Eventually, Soviet filmmakers got so involved that they found the essence of cinema not in intrigue, drama, or performance, but in editing. For example, Lev Kuleshov explored the properties of transition between shots, Eisenstein developed the concept of intellectual montage, and Dziga Vertov applied musical literacy to film editing and poeticised the perfect camera vision. Vertov created the manifesto of his editing style, Man with a Movie Camera, at the Ukrainian VUFKU film factory. However, this fact has often been ignored by Russian film historians, who have effectively monopolised the legacy of the Soviet film avant-garde since the collapse of the USSR.
The experience of the Soviet and Ukrainian schools had a significant impact on filmmakers in Western Europe and the United States, especially documentary filmmakers. In the 1960s, it was the famous French film reformers and cinephiles Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin who brought Vertov's theory back from oblivion and adapted his Kino-Pravda (literally 'Film-Truth’) method to their own style, cinéma-vérité. It is noteworthy that compilation films popular today, which are edited by joining scenes and footage from other films, also have their roots in early Soviet cinema. Vertov, who worked as an editor for the Kinotyzhden (literally ‘Cinema Week’) magazine in Moscow at the beginning of his career, created propaganda films out of newsreels.
Film editing certainly reflects a historical era. The second half of the twentieth century marks the start of an aesthetic struggle between two editing methods (inter-frame and intra-frame). At the end of the century, clip editing took over the screens, and in contemporary auteurist cinema we increasingly see films whose scenes are shot in a single take, as if to protest against the fast and chaotic aesthetics of American action films. Even the new media and the pandemic are modifying the logic of editing; for instance, the genre of desktop cinema developed significantly during the COVID pandemic.
The genre of compilation film in this programme is represented by Paul Wright’s Arcadia. It is included here for two reasons. Firstly, using the vocabulary of montage theorists, this essay is an ideological counterpoint to Vertov's compilations. While the Soviet documentary filmmaker was attracted by the movement of machines and the 'press of revolution', the British director is interested in a diametrically different question: how humanity has neglected its connection with nature and lost its paradise on Earth. It's a vain hope that the shimmering collage of pagan rituals, ecstatic raves and British pastoral & mystical suspense will offer a clear answer. However, we understand this archival reflection like nobody else, as Ukrainian culture has always been close to folklore, and the countryside has always been a source and treasure trove of all our national values. Secondly, the hypnotic soundtrack for the film was composed by two British music icons, Adrian Utley of Portishead and Will Gregory of Goldfrapp. A year ago, Portishead performed at a charity concert in support of Ukraine in Bristol – the band's first live show in seven years.
a still from the film Private Footage
In 2018, Brazilian artist Janaína Nagata bought a 16mm reel online for a movie projector. It turned out that the film was of a private video of a young family's holiday in South Africa. The cosy footage seemed to be a sweet memory of safari, exoticism and carefree fun by the pool – but not to the director's critical eye. Janaína embarks on an investigation using the split-screen technique and the entire arsenal of the internet’s open sources. Like a skilled researcher for Bellingcat, she deconstructs the video into its components and effectively detaches the actual reality of apartheid and racial discrimination. The apparent simplicity of desktop documentaries is certainly deceptive. Private Footage is an example of thoughtful and complex editing.
a still from the film Apolonia, Apolonia
Any conversation about editing in documentary cinema always involves the genre of observational cinema. There, the drama is created by time, which always poses a serious challenge for documentary filmmakers because in practice it means tons of footage and months of editing. The Danish filmmaker Lea Glob decided to observe her protagonist, the thirteen-year-old artist Apolonia Sokol. Her camera lens captured both Apolonia's creative ups and downs, her relationship with Oksana Shachko, a Ukrainian artist and co-founder of Femen, and her own life. In the end, her poignant and incredibly beautiful Apolonia, Apolonia turned from a portrait of an eccentric artist into a personal story where the fates of three creative women are skillfully sewn together with invisible but strong threads of editing. This film is now triumphantly marching through international festivals, and seems to leave no-one indifferent.
It seems it has taken me forever to write the next passage. I developed the Editing Transition curatorial programme at the invitation of my fellow Docudays members for one more reason. It is dedicated to my husband Viktor Onysko, an editor with 15 years of experience. He professionally edited films, video clips, and trailers for the Docudays programmes. Outside of work, he easily edited our personal reality, filled with parenthood, travelling, music, films, books and friends. After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Vitia joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine. He did not want to fight, but he believed there was no other choice at this terrible moment in history. With no previous military experience, he quickly became a commander, and together with his brothers and sisters, he liberated the Kherson region. On 30 December 2022, my husband was killed in the Donetsk region. I still find it hard to write about Vitya in the past tense. But this collection of films has helped me to express something I cannot describe in the text. Despite the pain, I sincerely believe that we will no longer forget our ancestors, as the British did in Arcadia, and we will not allow history to be rewritten, as the Russians did, inspired by Italian fascism in The March on Rome. We will be as sensitive as the characters in Apolonia, Apolonia and as fair as the film Private Footage. We Ukrainians will always remember the price of our inevitable victory.
Text: Olga Birzul, cinema curator and culture manager.
Main photo: a still from the film The March on Rome.
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The 20th anniversary of Docudays UA is held with support from the Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine, the Embassy of Switzerland in Ukraine, the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation, US Embassy in Ukraine, the Embassy of Ireland in Ukraine, the Embassy of Denmark in Ukraine, the Embassy of Brazil in Ukraine, the Polish Institute in Kyiv and the Czech centre Kyiv. The opinions, conclusions or recommendations do not necessarily reflect the views of the governments or organisations of these countries. Responsibility for the content of the publication lies exclusively on the authors and editors of the publication.
