1 MAN WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA - CONSTRUCTING VISIONS OF HAPPINESS IN THE IDEAL SOCIALIST CITY OF THE FUTURE Stavros ALIFRAGKIS – PhD Researcher, Digital Studio, Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge François PENZ – Reader in Architecture and the Moving Image, Director of the Digital Studio, Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge Abstract In the 1920s fascination with the city resulted in an unprecedented increase in moving image works that encapsulated the dynamics of modernity. Such formalistic experimentation with the iconography of urban landscapes is generically referred to as City Symphonies. Dziga Vertov‟s Man with the Movie Camera (USSR, 1929), a film that epitomises the characteristics of this genre, acts as a concrete and particular example of an attempt to construct a cinematic image of the ideal socialist city of the future, through the depiction of contented citizens in the act of “building Socialism in one Мountry”. The shot-by-shot formalist analysis of Vertov‟s film – conducted as part of an on- going doctoral research project at the University of Cambridge – highlights two terms specific to cinema, whiМh play a Мentral role in the МonstruМtion of Vertov‟s vision of collective happiness. Punctus-contra-punctum montage – a working definition for a technique that exploits analogies in form or content between adjacent clips – and Lev Kuleshov‟s artificial landscapes – the consistent filmic landscapes composed of moving images – offer a way of producing meaningful thematic sequences. This is considered in parallel with the study of theories of city-planning, especially the urbanist-deurbanist dispute, with special focus on the interpretation of Marxist doctrines about the city. In particular, this paper discusses the relationship between private space and public space, as well as the new role industry and infrastructure assumed in the МonstruМtion of Vertov‟s urЛan cinematic utopia. In addition, it aims to demonstrate how novel architectural types, such as the worker‟s Мlub, pull together the urban and social fabric of his filmic city. 0. Introduction This paper seeks to explore the mechanisms with which Dziga Vertov (1896-1954), the renowned Soviet film-director and theoretician, constructed a vision of collective happiness in the city of the future through his film Chelovek s Kino-Apparatom [Man with the Movie Camera] (USSR, 1929). These are considered in parallel with the study of select theoretical work on Soviet architecture and city-planning from the same period. The main argument we