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 28, 4 p.m. Faust. 6^th Regeneration, a filmed performance, 2009

This film captures Boris Yukhananov's production of Faust that ran from 1999 to 2008, and  was the result of the work of the Laboratory of Playful Structures (run by Yukhananov and actor Igor Yatsko). The premiere of the six-hour Faust by Goethe, translated by Pasternak, took place in 1999. With each new metamorphosis of the performance, not only the cast of actors changed, but everything else did, too, including the set design by Yuri Kharikov, the timing (starting in the second edition, the director reduced the action from six hours to three), and the look of the central images, which was suggested by the change of performers and the change of whole historical eras. “One of the most important themes of the play is the nodal divine paradox of the universe - the correlation of the Lord’s plan with Creation, the image and the prototypical image, earthly cataclysms and humanitarian disasters juxtaposed with the Christian doctrine of salvation.” (Marina Maximik)

See details on the Boris Yukhananov website.