“A Sixth Part of the World” Movie poster. 1926

Artists V. Stenberg, G. Stenberg, A. Naumov

A Sixth Part of the World, sometimes called The Sixth Part of the World, is a 1926 silent film directed by Dziga Vertov and produced by Kultkino, a division of Sovkino. Presented in a travelogue format, the film depicts the diverse peoples of the Soviet Union, particularly those in its most remote regions, while showcasing the vast natural and economic resources of the country. More than a simple ethnographic record, the film serves as a call for unity in the creation of a “complete socialist society.”

Blending newsreel and found footage, Vertov constructed the film from sequences shot by eight teams of kinoks (cinema-eyes) during their expeditions. In Vertov’s view, the film anticipated the arrival of sound cinema through its use of a recurring “word-radio-theme” in the intertitles. With A Sixth Part of the World and his subsequent feature The Eleventh Year (1928), Vertov refined the cinematic style that he would later bring to full maturity in his most celebrated work, Man with a Movie Camera (1929).