Pioneer of political documentary and inventor of cinema verite, Dziga Vertov has exerted a decisive influence on directors from Eisenstein to Godard. Yet his reputation long rested upon a lone masterpiece, Man with a Movie Camera. Recently, Vertov has begun to be recognized as the creator of a body of innovative and distinct films and, as Jeremy Hicks argues, documentary as we know it today is unthinkable without the rediscovery of Vertov. This, the first book in English to cover the whole of Vertov"s career, reveals him to be an auteur, allowing readers to combine the familiar and less familiar aspects of his filmmaking and thinking in a cohesive narrative.