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.

Two films in a director's duology, describing the mysterious trials and tribulations of a Master and his companions in search of an image for a performance. The material for Spiritual Instinct was created in 2002 by Boris Yukhananov and Grigory Zeltser's LaboraTORiAH - a project that explored the relationship between playfulness and sacred principles using the texts of the Torah. The production called LaboraTORiAH. The Golem was first shown at the Tikun Olam festival of Jewish theatres in Vienna in 2007, then played at the School of Dramatic Art.

See details on the Boris Yukhananov website.

Journey through the Apocalypse reflects the work of Boris Yukhananov and Igor Yatsko's Laboratory of Playful Structures leading toward the premiere of the sixth edition of Faust. Based on the famous Goethe tragedy, this Faust was both an attraction and a mystery. Yury Kuklachyov's famous acting cats participated in interludes and, as Yelena Kovalskaya wrote, “it seemed that Goethe and Yukhananov's cats tried to create a new mystery - a religious theatre and, at the same time, a public, mass theatre.” The premiere took place in 2009 on the stage of the School of Dramatic Art.

See details on the Boris Yukhananov website.