Fruitful and theoretical Artist contradictory enormous influence on his contemporaries Eisenstein and Pudovkin in the development of Soviet documentary and subsequent movements as Grierson School in London and the French cinéma vérité. He is considered the father of modern documentary.

In 1922 the manifesto launch Kino-Glad (Cinema-Eye), which presents his theories about the camera as an ideal tool to record reality. Sign adversary art cinema defends life captured unexpectedly, which reflected in works such as Cine-Eye (1924),¡ Forward, Soviet! (1926), The Sixth of the World (1926) and Three songs about Lenin (1934).