The Philosophical Aspect of the Spatial-Temporal Rhythms of the Social Space of the City in the Documentary: Using the Example of Dziga Vertov’s Screen Chronotope

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Abstract

The purpose of the study is to study the spatial and temporal rhythms of the social space of the city in a documentary film. It is generally believed that the first screening of the Lumiere brothers films on Capuchin Boulevard gave birth to documentaries - an art form based on real life photography, without staged scenes, acting and author’s vision. The philosophical potential of documentary cinema as a genre provides it with a special place in cinematography. Therefore, the rhythmanalysis of urban space in cinematic reality is of particular research interest - the screen chronotope of urban everyday life in documentary works. The city in the documentary is a full-fledged hero, and the urban space and all its architectonics, everyday life, changed by editing, create a new conditional time and space of film work. In a documentary film, montage is an important semantic tool with which the spatial component of the rhythmics of the city is created. The rhythm of the city can be traced with the repetition of certain elements, frames, patterns, which indicates the depth of the intensification of artistic composition. The analysis of the rhythm of urban space is a study of the changes and transformations of pulsation, the merging of the visible and the invisible in cinematography. Time, space and rhythm are important elements of the narrative and dynamism of the specifics of the cinematic experience. The on-screen chronotope is implemented in various specific techniques to immerse viewers in time intervals and multiple spaces, creating the illusion of continuous time. In these conditions of the space-time rhythms of urban life, the screen text is born, in the continuous movement of the vague boundaries of infinity. This study examines the spatial and temporal rhythms of urban everyday life using the example of Dziga Vertov’s chronotope of cinematic reality in avant-garde documentary cinema.

About the authors

Julia A. Kirsanova

RUDN University

Author for correspondence.
Email: kirsanova-yua@rudn.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0003-1532-4086
SPIN-code: 4832-4940

Assistant Professor, Department of Theory and History of Culture, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

6 Miklukho-Maklaya St., Moscow, 117198, Russian Federation

Irina K. Cherkasova

RUDN University

Email: cherkasova-ik@rudn.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0001-7993-0005
SPIN-code: 3756-9474

Assistant Professor, Department of Theory and History of Culture, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

6 Miklukho-Maklaya St., Moscow, 117198, Russian Federation

References

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Copyright (c) 2024 Kirsanova J.A., Cherkasova I.K.

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