Editing Cinema of the Soviet Union (section)

==1920s==
In the 1920s, the documentary film group headed by [[Dziga Vertov]] blazed the trail from the conventional newsreel to the "image centered publicistic film", which became the basis of the Soviet film documentary. Typical of the 1920s were the topical news serial ''[[Kino-Pravda]]'' and the film ''Forward, Soviet!'' by Vertov, whose experiments and achievements in documentary films influenced the development of Russian and world cinematography. Other important films of the 1920s were [[Esfir Shub]]'s historical-revolutionary films such as ''The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty'' which used montage editing techniques to repurpose old Imperial documentaries into a revolutionary theme.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Belyakov |first1=Victor |year=1995 |title=Russia's Last Tsar Nicholas II and Cinema |journal= Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television |volume=15 |issue=4 |pages=517–524 |doi= 10.1080/01439689500260381}}</ref> In 1924, filmmakers Sergei Eisenstein and Lev Kuleshov created the first association of Soviet filmmakers, the Association of Revolutionary Cinematography (ARK), to "meet the ideological and artistic needs of the proletariat". Although state controlled, "the organization was characterized by a pluralism of political and artistic views until the late 1920s".<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Miller |first1=Jamie |date=January 2007 |title=The Purges of Soviet Cinema |journal=Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema |volume=1 |issue=1 |pages=5–26 |doi=10.1386/srsc.1.1.5_1|doi-broken-date=December 20, 2024 |s2cid=144576497 }}</ref> One of the most iconic developments in film during this period that is still used in films today was editing and montage to create meaning. This style of film making came to be known as the Kuleshov effect and was employed to conserve film stock due to shortages during that period. The film ''Hydropeat'' by [[Yuri Zhelyabuzhsky]] marked the beginning of popular science films.{{Citation needed|reason=apparently [[Yuri Zhelyabuzhsky]] made a movie "Gidrotorf" in 1920 which can be translated as "hydro-peat" or "water peat", but the page at https://books.google.com/books?id=Cuw1vHuxITYC&lpg=PA763&pg=PA763 says it was a "documentary about new techniques of peat extraction", not science fiction...could the editor have confused this with [[Aelita]] which Zhelyabuzhsky was cinematographer for?|date=February 2019}} Feature-length agitation films in 1918–21 were important in the development of the film industry. Innovation in Russian filmmaking was expressed particularly in the work of Eisenstein. ''[[Battleship Potemkin]]'' was noteworthy for its innovative montage and metaphorical quality of its film language. It won world acclaim. Eisenstein developed concepts of the revolutionary epic in the film ''[[October: Ten Days That Shook the World|October]]''. Also noteworthy was [[Vsevolod Pudovkin]]'s [[Mother (1926 film)|adaptation]] of [[Maxim Gorky]]'s ''[[Mother (1926 film)|Mother]]'' to the screen in 1926. Pudovkin developed themes of revolutionary history in the film ''[[The End of St. Petersburg]]'' (1927). Other noteworthy silent films were films dealing with contemporary life such as [[Boris Barnet]]'s ''[[The House on Trubnaya]]''. The films of [[Yakov Protazanov]] were devoted to the revolutionary struggle and the shaping of a new way of life, such as ''[[Don Diego and Pelagia]]'' (1928). Ukrainian director [[Alexander Dovzhenko]] was noteworthy for the historical-revolutionary epic ''[[Zvenigora]]'', ''[[Arsenal (1929 film)|Arsenal]]'' and the poetic film ''[[Earth (1930 film)|Earth]]''.<ref name="GSE">{{GSEn|030632|Довженко Александр Петрович}}</ref>