Parvo (camera)

The Parvo was a 35mm motion picture camera developed in France by André Debrie.

The Parvo was immensely popular in Europe during the silent film era, straight through the 1920s.

Directors who relied on the camera included Dziga Vertov, Abel Gance, Leni Riefenstahl, and Sergei Eisenstein.

The latter's cinematographer, Eduard Tisse, would use the camera into the sound era, i.e. filming the duelling sequence in Alexander Nevsky.

Vertov animated a Debrie Parvo as mechanical protagonist and used it to make several hand-held sequences in his 1929 documentary, Man with a Movie Camera.