© 2026 The Couch Critic
Between 1922 and 1925, a total of 23 issues of Dziga Vertov’s newsreel series KINO-PRAVDA (KINO-TRUTH) appeared (albeit irregularly and in very few copies). Vertov’s goal was to create a kind of ‘screen newspaper’; the title is a tribute to the newspaper Pravda founded by Lenin. Just like the KINONEDELJA (KINO-WEEK) newsreel series (1918-19), the KINO-PRAVDA issues offer a fascinating insight into the early Soviet Union and demonstrate the rapid development of Vertov’s film language. The 22 surviving issues (No. 12 is lost) have been digitized and subtitled in German and English by the Austrian Film Museum.
Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: Starving children / Requisitioning of valuables possessed by the Russian Orthodox Church / Fundraising flights in support of the hungry / Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries.
Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: The opening of an electric generating station / Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries.
Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries / Demonstrators carrying banners.
Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries / Motor race Moscow – Sevastopol' / Barges loaded with grain are sent to the starving in the provinces / The Caucasus and its resorts.
Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: Peasant People's Commissar for Agricultural Affairs, Vasilij Jakovenko / Health resort Soči / Sanatorium for children / Harness racing - The first Red Derby.
Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: Streetcar collision / Arms manufacturing plant resumes operation / Assembling an automobile / Bicycle and motorcycle races / A parade of Red Army armored units and an attack exercise.
Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries / Rebuilding of the destroyed Siberian village of Taseevo / Railroad station Sljudjanka / Abandoned mica pits near Lake Baikal / Soči health resort / Chudjakovskij-Park / Beach near Tuapse / The loading of silk / Afghanistan, Kabul / Peacetime use of tanks / Mountain road / Chapel in the Caucasus.
Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: A bet is placed on the outcome of the Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries / The verdict / People in streetcars and on the street / A crashed aircraft / Reconstruction of streetcar line 13 / Peacetime use of tanks – airport construction work.
Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: Congress of the "Living Church" / Opening of the horse racing season / Demonstration of an American movie camera / Operation of mobile projection units.
Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: International Youth Day and demonstrations / All-Russian Olympiad / Streetcar collision / Construction of automobiles in a Petrograd factory.
Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: All-Russian Congress of Trade Unions / Delegations and diplomats / Renaming of a confectionery factory / Unloading supplies / Komsomol Day / Red Army maneuvers.
Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel. The first themed issue of Kino-Pravda, devoted to the fifth anniversary of the October Revolution in 1922.
Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: IV. Congress of the Comintern / Congress of the Profintern.
Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: Against war / Against Gods / Education / Agitation / Sports and gymnastics / Danger of war.
Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: Arts and crafts exhibition / Actions against hunger / Eisenstein's first film "Dnevnik Glumova" ("Glumov's Diary") / Young Pioneers / May 1, parades
Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: Hunger and harvest / Alliance between city and country / Agricultural and home industries exhibition: To the exhibition, construction work and preparations, exhibits, map of the exhibition, visitors
Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: Up the Eiffel Tower in Paris / Moscow / Auto race Petrograd – Moscow / Aspects of everyday Soviet life / Peasant from Jaroslavl' visiting Moscow / Ceremonial introduction of a newborn into a workers' collective
Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: Connecting city and country, south and north, summer and winter, peasant women and worker women / Emancipation of women in the USSR
Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: Reports of the Pioneers: Excursion to the country, to the zoo etc.
Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel made to commemorate the first anniversary of the death of Vladimir Ilich Lenin (21st January 1924 - 1925) drawn from 'The Final Journey', a Pravda feuilleton written on the occasion of Lenin's funeral by the man who had introduced Vertov to cinema, Mikhail Koltsov. Contains: First anniversary of Lenin's death: 1. Assassination attempt on Lenin and Soviet Russia's progress under his leadership / 2. Lenin's illness, death and funeral / 3. The year after Lenin's death
Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: First anniversary of Lenin's death / Smycka of the city and the village: group of peasants visit Moscow / Lenin's effect on peasants and oppressed nations
Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: A peasant buys a receiver at the radio shop / Instructions to attach an antenna / A broadcast-station is developed / A concert is broadcast. Though only a third of this final issue of Kino-Pravda seems to survive, there still exists Aleksandr Bushkin’s time-lapse animation and the sequence in which, as Yuri Tsivian describes, “a cross-section of a photographically correct izba (Russian peasant’s log hut) is penetrated by schematically charted radio waves”—a testament to the magical properties and propagandistic uses of radio in reaching out to Russia’s distant peasantry.
