Directed by Dziga Vertov
Screenplay by Dziga Vertov
Director of photography: Mikhail Kaufman, Gleb Troyanski
Music by Michael Nyman (2001)
Cast: Mikhail Kaufman
Production: Vseukrainske Foto Kino Upravlinnia

Michael Nyman is a preeminent representative of experimental music, and not merely a representative but a theoretician as well. Experimental composers are interested insituations that can be delineated with notes, he writes in his work on the genre, they seek asituation or image that sets rules, and these rules determine the base lines of the music. It isnot a coincidence that Nyman created his most important and well-known pieces with Peter Greenaway, who works with formula-like scenes and repetitions, bringing mathematics intofilm. Dziga Vertov’s urban film, the opening scene of which shows the cameraman behindthe camera, reveals what the work is about – preserving the life of a city – and this virtually demanded that Michael Nyman should compose the music for it because of the symmetriesand the opportunities setting rules. Vertov’s poetic film is not only interesting because itevokes the constant buzz of a city, but also because of how it plays with the opportunitiesafforded by film: for example, in that scene shot next to the railway tracks, which can be theillustration of both the montage theory and the Kuleshov effect. Here with Nymann, the solopiano plays, evoking hushed Satie music: ghostly music.