Man with the Movie Camera is an experimental 1929 silent documentary film by Rusian director Dziga Vertov. The film follows a cameraman around various cities, intercutting his footage with footage of him filming and footage of a woman editing; it features a number of cinematic techniques sometimes thought to have been created later. For instance, it features (among others), double exposure, fast motion, slow motion, freeze frames, jump cuts, split screens, Dutch angles, extreme closeups, tracking shots, footage played backwards, and a self-reflexive storyline (at one point it features a split screen tracking shot; the sides have opposite Dutch angles).
In addition to its unabashedly art film bent; the film features a few obvious stagings such as the scene of the woman getting out of bed and getting dressed (cameras at the time were fairly bulky and loud, and not surreptitious) and the reversed shot of the chess pieces being unswept to the center of the board. Vertov was criticized for both the stagings and the stark experimentation of the film, possibly as a result of Vertov's assailing of dramatic film as a new "opiate of the masses."
The film, originally released in 1929, was accompanied on site by various music; it was re-released in 1996 with a new soundtrack performed by the Alloy Orchestra, based on notes left by Vertov.