Man with a Movie Camera is an experimental 1929 Soviet silent documentary film, directed by Dziga Vertov, filmed by his brother Mikhail Kaufman, and edited by his wife Yelizaveta Svilova. Vertov's feature film, produced by the film studio VUFKU, presents urban life in Moscow and the Ukrainian cities of Kyiv and Odesa during the late-1920s. It has no actors. From dawn to dusk Soviet citizens are shown at work and at play, and interacting with the machinery of modern life. To the extent that it can be said to have "characters", they are the cameramen of the title, the film editor, and the modern Soviet Union they discover and present in the film.

Man with a Movie Camera is famous for the range of cinematic techniques Vertov invented, employed or developed, such as multiple exposure, fast motion, slow motion, freeze frames, match cuts, jump cuts, split screens, Dutch angles, extreme close-ups, tracking shots, reversed footage, stop motion animations and selfreflexive visuals (at one point it features a split-screen tracking shot; the sides have opposite Dutch angles).

About Montopolis:

Montopolis is an indie chamber music group from Austin, Texas that performs the works of composer Justin Sherburn. Their music folds country and folk idioms into modern classical arrangements with inventive instrumentation to create "stunning and transcendent" (Austin Chronicle) concerts. Their programs are audience-engaging, multi-media events that combine live music with video and interactive story telling. Their most recent albums, Music for Enchanted Rock and The Legend of Big Bend, are themed around Texan ecological points of interest. Montopolis will continue to be inspired by and draw attention to the natural wonders of our state, country and planet. The Montopolis musicians include members of the Austin Symphony, Okkervil River, Tosca String Quartet, and the Polyphonic Spree.

About Justin Sherburn:

Justin Sherburn is a composer, producer, and musical director based in Austin, Texas. He composes for feature films and produces music for theater and dance companies as well as writing and recording music for his group Montopolis, represented on the albums, “Music for Enchanted Rock” and “The Legend of Big Bend”. In Spring 2020, Justin was chosen as an artist in residence at Acadia National Park. In 2019, he was awarded the Innovations grant by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Mid America Arts Alliance. His previous awards include the audience award at SXSW Film Festival, "Best Music" at the Ocean Blue Film Festival, the B Iden Payne award for best musical director and best original score, and the Austin Critics Table award for Music Composition. He has had a long and varied career as a touring musician, working with indie rock group Okkervil River, the tango orchestra “Glovertango” and the swing band 8 1/2 Souvenirs, sharing the stage with legends such as Willie Nelson, Roky Erickson, Brian Setzer and Wilco, appearing on the David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, and Jimmy Fallon television shows, and performing at festivals around the globe from Coachella to Primavera Sound in Barcelona to the Laneway Festival in Australia. 

As a musician, Justin Sherburn has had a decades long career as a pianist and guitarist performing jazz, rock, folk and tango and embracing the traditional role that each of these genres demand. As a composer, he draws on these traditions within a modern classical and rock framework. His original compositions combine traditional orchestral instrumentation with analog synthesizers, digital programming, and field recordings. Justin’s group “Montopolis” produces multi-media events that combine music performance with projected imagery and story telling themed around geographic points of interest in Texas. Inspired by the landscape, Sherburn hopes to inspire environmental stewardship in others through his art.