Woman with a movie camera

When I was in film school (mid-90s) I took a documentary class in which we learned about the history of documentary film - which at least in the early stages, was the history of film in general. One of the films we studied was "Man with a Movie Camera," an experimental documentary directed by Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov in 1929. 

Despite the fact that he was making a movie for the Soviet propaganda machine, he made a movie for himself, satisfying his own curiosity about connections in the world, the beauty, the expressiveness of movement, and the day to day life of the common man (aka the proletariat). 

I was deeply impressed by the power of the medium in Vertov's hands, the innovative use of shadow and light, movement and stillness, the moments of the every day used to highlight a grander idea, larger than one person or one moment. He used experimental (for the time) techniques such as jump cuts, filming at fast and slow speeds, multiple exposures, stop motion, freeze frame, thematic and rhythmic montage, and collision cutting (editing). It was a self-reflexive film, which at the time was not appreciated one bit, while today, people can't seem to stop stepping in front of their own cameras.

Vertov was part of a movement called Kino-okis (Kino-eyes), embracing a radical filmmaking that
eschewed all non-documentary filmmaking:

This new experimentation work by Kino-Eye is directed towards the creation of an authentically international absolute language of cinema on the basis of its complete separation from the language of theatre and literature.

The eye - the lens of the camera and behind it, the lens of the filmmaker - sees the world in a new way, perhaps for the first time in some unrepeatable moment, creating and suggesting meaning, sometimes playful, sometimes heavy. Uniquely filmic.

I am after the essence of chasing down and being in those moments, playing with what is there, creating connections between people, places, feelings, and events through my own lens, a lens that has changed over the last 22 years since I first went to Korea. While my film will be far less experimental, I am still influenced by the work of Vertov that uses cinema language  to tell a story. 

Much of "Man with a Movie Camera" was filmed from moving trains and trolleys. What will I see from my window seat on the Korea Dreambus?