- Brother of Boris Kaufman.
- The pseudonym "Dziga Vertov" literally translates as "spinning, turning". The artist adopted this moniker whilst experimenting with film and audio recordings in the mid-1910s, and kept it for the rest of his career.
- Born in Bialystok, Poland, studied music and enrolled in St. Petersburg Neurological Institute in 1916. Worked on first Soviet newsreel, Kinonedelia (1918-1919), then on subsequent newsreel series (inc. Kinopravda, 1922-1925).
- Originally buried with his mother at Miusskaya Cemetery in Moscow. Vertov's posthumous reputation grew steadily with the post-Stalin cultural "thaw" of the late 1950s, and in 1967 he was reinterred in an honor grave at Moscow's Novodevichy Cemetery.
- Had no creative control over his work after 1937, and could only direct government-approved documentaries and propaganda films. From 1944 until his death, Vertov was consigned to working anonymously as an editor of the Moscow newsreel "News of the Day".
- Brother of Mikhail Kaufman.
- Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945". Pages 1122-1125. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.
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