A film about film

What I found most refreshing and most remarkable about "The Man with a Movie Camera" was how Vertov's intentions were so concerned with the development of film as a distinctly cinematic form -- it should not imitate old art forms but rather use the technology available to create something entirely new, vital, and vibrant. It is a daring, fast-moving, and triumphant work that is full of life.
My one issue with the film is that it does not perhaps accurately reflect the real urban Russia that it strives to -- it is much more focused on presenting the image of a bustling, mechanical city life that is a product of Stalin's Great Transformation of Russia into a modernized industrial state, launched into the present through his 5-Year Plans. This is an image instead of a reflection of the poverty and censorship and turmoil that the real Man with a Movie Camera would have also found in late 1920s Russia.
Still, the movie is visually exciting and memorable, leaving us with dozens of beautiful images and scenes. It is a film about film and the making of film, and it daringly succeeds in creating the new, fast-paced international language that it sought to achieve.