Women At Work

My audiovisual essay is concerned with the depiction of labor, women at work, and women’s solidarity. I engage with Man with a Movie Camera (1929), a film that famously lionizes the powers of montage: its associative abilities, production of affect, encouragement of experimentation, and even the potential to transform consciousness, as Dziga Vertov, its key architect, believed. I highlight the labor of the editor, Elizaveta Svilova, who is one among many other women workers. In the second half, the juxtaposition of the Soviet film with Marker's Sans soleil reveals generative resonances.