Vertov's film presents urban life in the Ukrainian cities of Odessa, Kharkiv and Kiev. From dawn to dusk Soviet citizens are shown at work and at play, and interacting with the machinery of modern life. Escaping from the documentary genre - and being recognised later as features of an essay essay - staged shots, actors and innovative montage are used with the intention of presenting one idea: the ubiquitous presence of the camera and the cinema in the modern life. The cameramen is presented as a character that goes inside glasses of pubs, rides a motorcycle and goes into water. In a way that controversially seems to anticipate the orwellian horrors of vigilation that became common in the USSR, this so called essay reads the present but also experiments with the future in a way that belongs to the director subjectivity.