John MacKay presents the annual IU Cinema and Media Studies Naremore Lecture, “Vertov without Progress.” It is impossible to grasp Dziga Vertov’s film and theoretical work independently of the ideology of progress that informed it. If we accept that this ideology no longer carries the same force for the left, how are we to rethink Vertov’s work today, more than 100 years after the October Revolution? Is a Communist film practice possible without some ideology of progress?
Professor MacKay’s visit is sponsored by the Center for Documentary Research and Practice as part of the Sawyer Seminar series on “Documentary Media and Historical Transformations,” and co-sponsored by Cinema and Media Studies, the Media School, the IU Cinema, the Russian and East European Institute, and the Department for Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures.
