Three Songs of the Lenin

Three Songs of Lenin is a documentary film made in 1934. The director of the film is Dziga Vertov. The film incorporates real images of Lenin and shows his real life in 1934. The songs sung for Lenin in this film include topics such as a woman who has just freed herself from the veil, which was like a prison to her, a village which has just gotten electricity, water which has made the desert green, people who have freed themselves from ignorance and have learnt how to read and other things which include traces of Lenin’s legacy. These songs are basically about the October Revolution, revolution in general and Lenin’s ideas which live on. The documentary is made up of three songs, which make up its three parts. It is a documentary completely dedicated to Lenin. Every shot of the film has a trace of Lenin. The film includes scenes where Lenin is talking to the masses, where Lenin, holding the red flag in his hand, has the masses following him, and that of a man like everyone else, looking around him with his smiling eyes. In the first song, that is the first section of the film, we also see traces of the Turkish people living in that region. A woman and her soldier fiancé are speaking a dialect of Azeri and Turkish. The dialogue is as follows: The soldier: “Is the rifle in place?, the woman: “It is in place”. “möhkem tie it”, “I tied it”, “take aim”, “I took aim”. One of the biggest freedoms the revolution brought was to free the woman from the veil, which cut her connection to the outside world. Like the men in society, women began to take part in the production process. The second and third songs of the film describe the period of Lenin, the death of Lenin and what he has done for his people and the socialist production relations, the collective farms and the developments in several industrial branches. At the end of the film there is the writing “One day people may forget the country of their ancestors but they will never forget the name of Lenin”.
In his manifestos, Dziga Vertov has excluded literature and poetry but he never took a step back from using the medium of the documentary. He has a very poetic expression and poetic passages. Vertov has left a lasting effect on Soviet and World Cinema. The film Three Songs for Lenin was shot using resources from the people and has reached millions of viewers. This film which was made in 1934, has many images of Lenin as well as a speech from his own voice, has reached us today. In addition I think, this film is very beneficial in human perspective and political perspective.