Overview

In 2009, Russian film director Ilya Khrzhanovsky began one of the most expansive, complex and all-consuming cinematic feats ever attempted, filming 24/7 in a replica of a Soviet restricted-access research facility known as ‘the Institute’, constructed in Kharkov, Ukraine, and covering 12,000 sq m – the largest-ever film set in Europe. What began as a biopic of physicist Lev Landau quickly escalated as 400 people gave up their lives for three years to live and participate in this unscripted work of ‘faction’, set in the period 1938 to 1968. Their lives were constantly recorded, resulting in 700 hours of intimate and sometimes unsettling footage, since transformed into thirteen feature films and three ‘television’ series. Known collectively as DAU, this ‘Stalinist Truman Show’ serves both as a testament to life under three decades of communism and as a potent and innovative statement on the human condition. This slipcased volume sets the scene with colour stills from the original feature film – a biopic of Lev Landau. This elegiac introduction is followed by an impactful black-and-white presentation of the DAU project, comprising stills from all footage made at the Institute (no matter how controversial), on-set photography, shot with Soviet-era Leica cameras and curated from an incredible 1.5 million images, and the results of all the experiments conducted at the Institute. Structured around the architecture of the Institute itself, this volume allows new aspects of the project and a host of intriguing characters to be revealed at every key location, from the Director’s office to the cafeteria, and from private apartments to the jail. Palpable throughout are the driving themes of power, love, science and magic. The final section catalogues the 80,000 bona fide items of period clothing and props, together with all the characters who took part in the project.

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9780500022948

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Phenomen Films is an independent film company based in London, established as part of the DAU project. Their archive comprises 700 hours of film stills, transcripts, costumes, artefacts, lectures and interviews with participants – both real and fictional.

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