Unstrung Nerves

The Soviet filmmaker and theorist Dziga Vertov once suggested, “cinema’s unstrung nerves need a rigorous system of precise movement.” For Vertov, the ideal cinema was a clockwork, of sorts, perfection derived from the unthinking operation of machinery.

The philosophy here is the opposite: that the best cinema lies in the unpredictable, the erratic, the undeniably human. If film is to be more than a corporate assembly-line of cogs to be fit into a capitalist machine, then viewers, critics, and artists alike must embrace the messiness and flaws of a cinema rooted in human experience.