Th e montage film: from the document-image (of archive) to the actual audiovisual production

Abstract

It is somewhat unusual that the montage fi lm (documentary) does not yet benefi t from a well-defi ned aesthetic status, starting from its name itself. In the few specialized works that refer to this kind of audiovisual production, especially of Russian expression, various defi ning features are used: “compilation fi lm”, “archive fi lm”, “cinematheque (mediatheque) fi lm”, “documentary-archival fi lm”, etc. We believe that the most appropriate name would be “montage fi lm”, because the given phrase encompasses a fundamental concept both for cinematographic art and, in terms of the theory and practice of the respective genre or format, namely, the montage (key operation in the edifi cation of the expected audiovisual reality). We also undertook a foray into the history of montage fi lm, bringing to the fore illustrious names and signifi cant examples from Soviet cinematography: Dziga Vertov, Esfi r Shub and Mikhail Romm. Other montage fi lms intended to complete our applicative analysis were taken from the Romanian audiovisual space, as well as from that of the Republic of Moldova.