Trivia

A revelation in its day, the film was noted for introducing all sorts of camera techniques to audiences. Some of these include double exposure, fast motion, slow motion, freeze frames, jump cuts, split screens, Dutch angles, extreme close-ups, tracking shots, backward footage, and stop motion animation.

Filmed over a period of three years.

Although seemingly set in one city, the film was actually shot in Moscow, Odesa, Kharkiv and Kyiv (although part of the Soviet Union at the time, the latter three cities are in what is now Ukraine.

Concerned about how the film would be received--and, frankly, that it might be destroyed by government censors--Dziga Vertov took out messaging in "Pravda" to try to explain the film's intentions and its anti-conventional stance against regular filmmaking. That tactic actually created greater interest in the film.

Although this film was well-received abroad, its style caused considerable controversy in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin's increasingly repressive rule. Even director Dziga Vertov's colleague Sergei Eisenstein accused him of indulging in "unmotivated camera mischief". Vertov enjoyed a few more years of relative creative freedom before the government banished him to anonymously editing newsreels.