The Cinema of Boris Yukhananov.

The Cinema of Boris Yukhananov: We Gaze into the Past as if it Were the Present

Films and theatre productions from the Boris Yukhananov archive

Jointly with Seance magazine 

This is a collection of productions on video that originated in numerous past eras of Russian culture. Some of them capture projects of the 1980s and 1990s, when several hotbeds of underground art arose inside the Soviet Union. Others are laboratory projects exploring all sorts of texts, as well as the nature of the actor/amateur in a performance. Finally, the third part offers completed productions that were performed at various theatre venues in the 2000s. Filmed as cinema, not as theatre, these works are a snapshot of Boris Yukhananov's oeuvre, which anticipated many trends in contemporary theatre and performance art.

Streams will take place on the Seance website and on the Electrotheatre page in Vkontakte.

May 24, 4 p.m. Sunflowers, 2002 

Boris Yukhananov's production of Sunflowers, based on one of Tennessee Williams’s later plays and starring Leah Akhedzhakova and Viktor Gvozditsky, unique individuals and stars in Russian theatre, was a performance about the boundaries between life and role-playing. “A stranger and more sophisticated duet is hard to imagine. He and she look like unexpectedly matured children - like Gaev and Ranevskaya, or Tyltil and Mytil. They cherish their childhood filled with hidden horror as if it were a safety boat, the laconic image of which was created by Yuri Kharikov. Their boat is a huge chair, as if seen through the eyes of a child. It looks like a bright, sunny staircase, “a ladder,” as the Bible says. A ladder of faith, of which there is but one, and which saves these lost children actors from spiritual death in the 'adult' world'.” (Alyona Karas)

See details on the Boris Yukhananov website.