Mikhail Kaufman

Birthday: 9/5/1897
Deathday: 11/3/1980
Place of birth: Bialystok, Grodno Province, Russian Empire (now Poland)
Fame for: Camera
Also known as: Михаил Кауфман, Кауфман Михайло Абрамович, Михайло Кауфман

Biography

Mikhail Kaufman was a Soviet cinematographer and photographer. In the 1920s, after Mikhail Kaufman returned from the Russian Civil War, his brother director Dziga Vertov offered him the opportunity to participate in his newsreel series Kino-Pravda as a cameraman. Kaufman directed photography for several films, including Vertov's Man with the Movie Camera. The film is built around meta-reference and is full of innovative visual effects: in it, Kaufman acts as a cameraman and is seen shooting the film while walking on high bridges, hanging off the side of a train, climbing a smokestack and crawling underground with miners – all in order to get the best shot. Mikhail Kaufman directed three films: Moscow (1927), In Spring (1929), and An Unprecedented Campaign (1931).