Yelzavela Svilova on AllMovie

Soviet film editor and director Svilova was known for her collaboration with Dziga Vertov, a pioneer of the montage documentary. Svilova began film editing in 1914 with Pathe. While working as an editor at Goskino, she met Vertov. Impressed by his Kinopravda newsreels that were done using rapid images put together to simultaneously chronicle facts and evoke their significance, Svilova quit working on fictional features to work with him. Later they married. She began as his editor, but soon became his assistant and co-director on his subsequent films. Many of their poetic documentaries, such as Cheloviek s kinoparatom (1929), and Tri pesni o Leninie (1934), became Soviet classics. During the mid thirties, Vertov suffered a professional slump after his films were accused of being 'formalist.' Fortunately, Svilova's reputation as an editor and director provided enough work to support them. During World War II, the couple were able to again work together. Svilova won the Stalin Prize in 1946 for co-editing Yuli Raizman's film Berlin. During the same year her film Zverstva fashitov provided evidence in the Nuremburg Trials. She also co-directed a film shot at Nuremberg, Sud narodov. Upon her husband's death in 1954, she saved his film archive and was a key figure in getting his theories published.