"Filmdrama is the opium of the masses...If we want to understand clearly the effect of films on the audience, we have first to agree about two things: 1. What audience? 2. What effect upon the audience are we talking about? On the movie-house abitue, the ordinary fiction film acts like a cigar or cigarette on a smoker. Intoxicated b the cine-niocotine, the spectator sucks from the screen the substance which soothes his nerves...To intoxicate and suggest - the essential method of the fiction film approximates it to a religious influence, and makes it possible after a certain time to keep a man in a permanent state of overexcited unconsciousness...[to] act upon the subconscious of the spectator or listener, distorting his protesting consciousness in every possible way." - Dziga Vertov in 1920, speaking about his KinoEye group
Grice, Malcolm Le. Experimental Cinema in the Digital Age (Bfi Film Classics (Paperback)). British Film Institute, 2002. pg. 45-46
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Vertov speaks of film drama as voodoo, a seemingly ironic comment, since his cinematography is not directly representative of reality. This infers, however, that his definition of the doumentary is a superficial capturing of a certain reality, but a carefully constructed eye that brings out the essence of that reality - What I love about Vertov is how he individualizes experience.
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