与张同道老师讨论真实电影
周老师：看了您关于真实电影的资料，特有用。看了电影，我觉得维尔
托夫是一个天才，一个创造型人物，还想了解一些他的其他作品，象
《关于列宁的三支歌曲》之类。另外，我还对法国让·鲁什特别感兴
趣，不知道您有没有收藏到他的资料或作品？
这几天我正在剪辑一部关于北京居委会选举的纪录片，拍了半年，近期
我的研究生去美国留学，我让她给您带一盘，请您指教。
收到了您的邮件，也给您发了邮件，如能联系上就太好了。
张老师，关于真实电影的现象比较复杂，我先告诉你一些
我个人所了解的不完整的资料。
真实电影 CINEMA VERITE 源自维尔托夫的电影眼睛派，维尔托夫的带
摄影机的人你已经看过，维尔托夫就是用这种观念创造了电影真理报
（KINO PRAVDA）也就是后来我们的新闻纪录电影制片厂出的新闻简
报，但是剪辑方法不一样。电影真理报是一种宣传鼓动AGITATION。
这也是十月革命初期搞的那种ECHELON AGITATIA，宣传鼓动车。爱
森斯坦都过这种活动。你可以看一下好莱坞电影儿《REDS》，在影片
最后就出现了宣传鼓动车。
在六十年代法国发生了五月风暴，学生反政府，这时那些学生电影爱好
者就组织了战斗队MILITIA，他们把自己的组织叫SLON，即俄文的大
象，也是由维尔托夫那里来的，我还没有查清楚。真实电影原来就是直
接叫KINO PRAVDA，在这里，GODARD起了很大的作用。
根据我自己的看法，GODARD是一个歪才。他后来在欧洲极受重视，
还不仅限于电影界，美术界，尤其是先锋派对他特别推崇。他在五月风
暴那个时期拍的一些影片政治性非常强，但确实很难让一般人理解。我
只看过一些片段。他那时的影片有《男人女人》（MASCULIN／
FEMININ，1966），《一个中国女人》（LA CHINOISE，1967），《我
知道关于他的两三件事》（TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT
HER，1966），《英国的声音》（BRITISH SOUND），《东风》
（WIND FROM THE EAST，1969），《美国制造》（NADE IN
USA），《周末》（WEEKEND，1967）
我看到的那一段好象是《东风》里的，一个穿着象是维多利亚时代的女
子跪坐在草地上读一本资产阶级的小说。然后在她后面站着一个好象的
印地安人手里拿着一把印地安人用的战斧，用它来敲那个女人的脑袋，
敲一下说一句，江青教导我们说............当时看的时候我全记得，那些话
全都是记要上的，你可以把江青我林彪搞的那个纪要找出来看看。镜头
是静止的。还有《周末》里的交通堵塞的一个长镜头。我没有办法理
解。这你们都可以弄来看看，估计电影资料馆里都有，你可以问问陈景
亮。
下面我接着把一些书上对CINEMA VERITE论述给你。
下面是美国史学家MAST的电影简史中的一段
Soviet Montage
The Russian film was born with the Russian film industry was a colony of
Europe--of Pathe or Lumiere or Scandinavia's Nordisk. No film was shot in
Russia by a Russian company until some ten years after the invetion of the
moving picture. The films of the next ten years (1907-1917) were strictly for
local consumption (very few of them were exported). Costume films, horror films,
and melodramas--the typical formulas of Europe and America--were the
staples of the pre-1917 Russian film diet. The revolution changed all that.
Marxist political and economic philosophy, which had evolved in the age of
machines, adopted the machine art as its own. Lenin considered the cinema the
most influential of all the arts. Movies not only entertained but, in the process,
molded and reinforced values. The film was a great teacher; with portable power
supplies it could be shown to huge groups of people at the same time in every
remote conrner of the new Soviet Union. While the flickering images held their
audiences captive, the events on the screen emphasized the virtues of the new
government and encouraged the Russian people to deveop those traits that would
best further it. Whereas the American film came into the world as an amusing
novelty, the Soviet film was created explicityly as teacher, bnot as clown. In
1919, after a chaotic year inwhich the Soviets had let the film industyry go its
own commerical way, the Russian industry passed under government control.
The first harvest, however, was six years in coming.
"The foundation of film art is editing," wrote Pudovkin in the preface to the
German edition of his book on film technique. Whereas the German innovators
concentrated on the look, the feel, the pictorial values of the individual shot, the
Soviet innovators concentrated on the effects of joining the shots together. Like so
many of the earlier innovations in film technique, the Soviet discoveries were the
products of experience and experiment rather than abstract theorizing. Two
significant accidents determined the paths the experimentation would take. The
first was the shortage of raw film stock. As in the rest of Europe, film stock was
scarce in Russia during and just after the war years. The Russian film famine
was ever more severe, for the still fighting Red and White armies erected
blockades against each other to keep supplies from getting through. Lacking
quantities of stock, the Soviet filmmakers had to make the most of what they had.
One of the first to make something was Dziga-Vertov, who traveled about the
country shooting newsreel footage with his camera, which he called his
"Kino-Eye."(kino glassa) Vertov then assembled this absolutely unstaged
footage (Vertov insisted on unstaged reality throughout his career) into a newreel
called Kino-Pravda, creating powerful emotional effects and educational results
from the way he joined this real footage together. Vertov brings the ordinary,
laborious tasks of building or rebuilding a nation to life (laying an airstrip,
planting crops, finishing a tram line) by examining the progress of the task from
many stirring and awesome angles that succeeded in endowing the ordinary with
wonder. Vertov succeeds in giving inanimate machines both stature and vitality,
revealing, as many of the later Soviet films would do, the powerful potential, the
almost sexual fertility of the union of men and machines. Of course, one of the
reasons for Vertov's dynamic editing was that he had to shoot with mere scraps
of film stock, and many of those scraps were very short.
在研究真实电影时，不应仅着眼于 VERITE，这是法文，而应该考虑到
维尔托夫当年把他的影片叫做KINO PRAVDA。而这是PRAVDA，不是
真理的意思，而是苏共中央的党机关报 真理报 的意思。维尔托夫的意
思是，既然有一个印刷的真理报纸，那么我这个是电影的真理报。那么
真理报是怎么回事呢，你们读过真理报吗？真理报作为我这个资料员的
剪报工作之一（即每天必读，不管你爱看不爱看，这是革命工作）有幸
读了十几年。我对它的真理不感兴趣。我对维尔托夫的兴趣是在他的剪
辑。不过这是我个人的偏见。
接着我不谈我的偏见，还是继续介绍国外对KINO PRAVDA的论述。然
后再是DIRECT FILM。
这里是维尔托夫自己写的文章，以后还要有他关于KINO－EYE 的文章。 EYE
研究生们，多读一些原汤原汁的东西，当头道贩子，不要当三道，四道
贩子。
ON KINOPRAVDA
Dziga-Vertov
Kinopravda is, on the one hand, linked to the old type of newsreel. On the other
hand, it is the present-day organ of the kinoks. I shall have to examine both
these aspects in my report.
After the October Revolution, the Pathe and Gaumont newsreels and the
newsreels of the Skoblev Committee were replaced by Kinoedelia (kinoweekly),
issued by the All-Russian Photo-Cinema Department.
Kinonedelia differed from the newsreels which preceded it perhaps only in tht its
subtitles were "Soviet." The subject mtter remained the same, the same old
parades and funerals. These were precisely the years when, still unfamiliar witht
the techniques of cinema, I began to work in cinema. By that time, despite its
youth, cinema had already established unshakeable cliches, outside of which
you were not allowed to work. My first experiments in assembling chance film
clippings into more or less "harmonious" montage groups belong to this period.
It seemed to me then that one such experiment was a complete success, and for
the firsty time I began to doubt the necessity of a literary connection between
individual visual elements spliced together. I had to halt the experiment
temporarily to work on a picture for the anniversary of the October Revolution.
This work served as the point of departure for Kinopravda. It was precisely
during this period of experiment that weveral of us who had lost faith in the
possibilities of "artistic" cinema and had faith in our own strength, sketched the
first draft of the manifesto that later caused such comotion and brought our
cinema-apostles so many unpleasant moments.
After a long break (at the front) I again would up in the Photo-Cinema
Department and was soon thrown into newsreel. Having learned from bitter
experience, I was terribly cautious in the first issues of Kinopravda. But as I
became convinced that I had the sympathy of, if not all, then at least some
viewers, I incresed pressure on the material.
Alongside the support received from Alexei Gan, the constructivist, then
publishing the journal Kinofot, I confronted ever-increasing internal and
external opposition.
By the tenth issue of Kinopraoda elicited the unexpected support of the press.
The almost unanimous diagnosis--"insane"--after the release of the fourteenth
issue, completely puzzled me. That was the most critical point in Kinopravda's
existence.
The ourteenth Kinopravda not only differed significantly from most newsreels of
its time, but bore no resemblance even to the preceding issues of Kinopravda.
Friends didn't understand and shook their heads. Enemies raged. Cameramen
announced that they couldn't film for Kinopravda, and the censors wouldn't pass
Kinopravda at all (for rather they passed it, but cut exactly half, which was
equivalent to destroying it). I myslef was perplexed, I must admit. The film's
structure seemed simple and clear to me. It took me a while to learn that my
critics, brought up on literature, under the force of habit, could not do without a
literary connections between the different items.
Later on it proved possible to eliminate the conflict. Young people and workers'
club gave the film a good reception. There was no need to concern ourselves
with the Nepman audience--the sumptuous Indian Tomb received them in its
embrace.
The crisis passed. But the battle continued.
Kinopravda made heroic attempts to shield the proletariat from the corrupting
influence of artistic film-drama. To many, these attempts seemed ridiculous.
The paltry number of prints of Kinopravda could serve, at most, some thousands
of people, not millions. But though Kinopravda's role in the creation of an
extensive workers' repertoire was small, its propagandistic action in the battle
with the commercial movie theater repertoire proved significant.
The charge was soon repudiated. The more farsighted amongst our deprecators
clutched their heads and quickly began to imitate us--some of them quite early
on. But many remained hostile to our work. A small group of conservative hacks,
very obtuse people, tirelessly showered praise on filmed canned goods (mostly
imported from abroad). These same people support the fabrication of similar
film-surrogates (of far inferior quality, it is true). Thanks to their clumsy efforts
every silghtly successful revolutionary undertaking is being nipped in the bud.
Shaking off these self-appointed nursemaids is not advisable. In revenge, they'll
set about proving it was their umbrellas that saved the public from the rain, that
is, from the kinoks. And when the rain stops and the artistic drama's sun is
shining, they fan the public obligingly. Thanks to these critics, the resplendent
image of the American millionaire-hero glows within the stern heart of the
Russian proletariat.
Almost all those who work in artistic cinema are either openly or covertly hostile
to Kinopravda and the kinoks. That is completely logical since, it our viewpoint
prevails, they'll either have to learn to work all over again or leave cinema
completely.
Neither group represents an immediate danger to the purity of the kinoks'
position. Far more dangerous are the newly formed intermediate and, as it were,
conciliatory, opportunistic groups. Adopting our methods, they transfer them to
the artistic drama, thereby strengthening its position.
In attacking Kinopravda our detractors gloatingly point out that it's madefrom
reviously shot, and therefore "random" footage. To us this means that the
newsreel is organized from bits of life into a theme, and not the reverse.This also
means that kinopravda doesn't order life to proceed according to a writer's
scenario, but observes and records life as it is, and only then draws conclusion
from these observations. It turns out that this is our advantage, not our
shortcoming. Kinopravda is made with footage just as a house is made with
bricks. With bricks one can make an oven, a Kremlin wall, and many other
things. One can build various film-objects from footage. Just as good bricks are
needed fro a house, good film footage is needed to organize a film-object.
Hence the serious approach to newsreel--to that factory of film footage in which
life, passing through the camera lens, does not vanish forever, leaving no trace,
but does, on the contrary, leave a trace, precise and inimitable.
The moment and the manner in which we admit life into the lens