This article argues that the work of 1920s Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov found especially fertile ground in 1960s Japan, where critics have long discussed ties between documentary and the avant-garde. Theorists interpreted Vertov's filmmaking as fundamentally avant-gardist. That is, it was both an "experiment in a dream" and an "experiment in reality," according to Nakahara Yusuke, rather than the work of a documentarian "catching life unawares." This transnational media ecology results in a strong tradition of experimental documentary that traces revolutionary politics to editing tricks and self-reflexivity. Soviet and Japanese avant-garde documentary emerge independently, and decades apart, yet result in a fascinating confluence of political avant-garde aesthetics that overlaps significantly.