Known for

Directing

Born

Sep 5, 1897

Died

Nov 3, 1980 (aged 83)

Place of birth

Bialystok, Grodno Province, Russian Empire (now Poland)

Mikhail Kaufman

Mikhail Kaufman was a Soviet cinematographer and photographer. In the 1920s, after Mikhail Kaufman returned from the Russian Civil War, his brother director Dziga Vertov offered him the opportunity to participate in his newsreel series Kino-Pravda as a cameraman. Kaufman directed photography for several films, including Vertov's Man with the Movie Camera. The film is built around meta-reference and is full of innovative visual effects: in it, Kaufman acts as a cameraman and is seen shooting the film while walking on high bridges, hanging off the side of a train, climbing a smokestack and crawling underground with miners – all in order to get the best shot. Mikhail Kaufman directed three films: Moscow (1927), In Spring (1929), and An Unprecedented Campaign (1931).

Titles

Man with a Movie Camera

Movie • 1929

Kino-Pravda No. 18: A Movie-Camera Race Over 299 Metres and 14 Minutes and 50 Seconds in the Direction of Soviet Reality

Movie • 1924

Kino-Eye

Movie • 1924

A Sixth Part of the World

Movie • 1926

The Eleventh Year

Movie • 1928

Kino-Pravda No. 8

Movie • 1922

Kino-Pravda No. 22: Lenin Is Alive in the Heart of the Peasant. A Film Story

Movie • 1925

Kino-Pravda No. 23: Radio Pravda

Movie • 1925

Kino-Pravda No. 6

Movie • 1922

Kino-Pravda No. 15

Movie • 1923

Kino-Pravda No. 20: Pioneer Pravda

Movie • 1924

In Spring

Movie • 1929

Kino-Pravda No. 17

Movie • 1923

Kino-Pravda No. 21: Lenin Kino-Pravda. A Film Poem About Lenin

Movie • 1925

An Unprecedented Campaign

Movie • 1931

World Without a Game

Movie • 1966