“Major gaps in [Dziga Vertov’s] biography impede our understanding of how this charismatic cinematic visionary managed, despite the complicated, treacherous, and too often ghastly conditions he lived through, to create important works that continue to fascinate and provoke viewers to this day. What has been lacking is a well-researched, large-scale biography as the basis for a comprehensive assessment of Vertov’s career. John MacKay, one of the most sophisticated contemporary students of Russian cinema, proves himself to be an ideal scholar to have taken on such an ambitious project. … With the possible exception of Simon Callow’s multi-volume biography of Orson Welles, I can recall nothing comparable in the field of cinema studies. If the other two parts of MacKay's trilogy equal the intellectual standard he has established in this first book, then only some of the great, multivolume literary biographies such as Joseph Frank’s Dostoyevsky or, more recently, Rainer Stach’s lauded account of Franz Kafka's life might arguably count as its peers.” —Stuart Liebman, Cineaste