The project “Dau” after the premiere in Paris and at the Berlin film festival appeared on the Internet platform DAU.com and continues to cause not only acute controversy, but even attempts to translate them into a legal plane. From the author of the project Ilya Khrjanovsky talked Andrey Plakhov.— Kharkiv oblast Prosecutor’s office started the investigation of the violation of legal rules regarding filming children. Talking about the babies from the orphanage, which allegedly were subjected to discomfort and even tortured on the set of “Dau”. What can you say about these accusations?— Rumors and suspicions are generated and the unusual method of creation of the project, and the duration of its production, and my many years of silence, and also by the material when viewing it is difficult to distinguish between game and reality. I recall that the “Dow” was created in cooperation with the largest European public funds. All movies in the project have a rental certificate of European countries, which implies a detailed inspection by lawyers all the circumstances of the shooting process.As for the scene with the babies, we had received permission to film from the head of the Department of health Kharkiv regional administration, as well as from the leadership of the orphanage. Representatives of the guardians of the orphanage visited the site and examined the conditions in which to shoot children. Was set the required temperature. A few nurses and nurses from the orphanage came to the Playground with the children. They are also in the frame, you can see them on the screen. The shooting of this scene lasted very briefly. Those people who change children and are around them,— that they — the staff of the orphanage. This was done in order that the children could not be any nervous stress due to the lack of close acquaintance with them of their rights.— What, besides the suspicion-based accusations like that? I think they are built on a naive audience perception, sometimes inherent, even people educated and cultured. But they argue, like the country girl of the 1920-ies, settled as a housekeeper in Moscow family, about which he writes in his book about the nature of perception of cinema film critic Bela Balazs. This girl for the first time in my life I visited cinema and the question of how her film, replied, this is so awful, they show people cut to pieces, their heads and hands. And that meant, of course, editing and close-UPS! But to understand this Convention it was in no way ready. — With all the authenticity of the psychological experiences of the characters is very important not to confuse the artistic image and the reality behind them. When we see in the picture with the babies wires and other medical devices, hear their cries, we must still not forget that this sh��µa the film, which involves overlaying, sound amplification and other professional “special effects”. Otherwise, the corpses of all the main characters that we see at the end of the film “Dau. Degeneration”, also can be taken at face value and to demand investigation of mass killings.— Where children there and animals. To the question about slaughtered in front of the camera the pig, thrilling many, including, I confess, and me. Simultaneously with the “Dau” at the same Berlinale appeared the movie “the Gunda” Victor Kosakovsky consisted, after some critics took an oath to eat pork. You feel yourself in a Western context, “against the trend”?— Feel out any trends for the reason that I don’t think about them and try to meet them. Great movie Kosakovsky consisted “Gund” and the episode in the movie “Degeneration” talking about the same thing, but from different sides. The sacrifice of a pig in the movie “Degeneration” is justified, it creates an image of the murder itself. The pig was not killed with special cruelty, certainly far less cruel than, for example, the bull in the movie Coppola’s “Apocalypse now”, but the killing is always cruel, especially when it is a murder committed in your eyes. We see in the picture, as the instant speed is only the living entity turns into pieces of meat, which in another moment be in the pan. I think a dialogue about compassion for animals especially touching sounds in Germany, where a year consumed more than 8 million tons of meat, but it is one thing to see meat on the table or in the butcher shop, the other — to see that the meat was just living flesh.— A group of Russian journalists filed a claim to the Berlin festival over the inclusion of the film “Dau. Natasha” in the competition. They asked the curators question, already assuming the answer (negative): possible would be the same manipulative production, where its members are bullied mentally, psychologically and sexually, in the country First and not Third world? (The First refers to Europe and the United States, Third — Ukraine and Russia dominated by oligarchs, widespread poverty and lawlessness.) What do you think about cultural colonialism? It is today a real phenomenon or a product of imagination inflamed minds?— Was it possible to remove things in the West? It is of course possible, although it is difficult to imagine what would be in this case, the project budget and how it would be possible to implement it technologically. If I were German, I could do the same project about Nazi Germany. Or if I lived in Chile, would make the project about the years of Pinochet. I think that totalitarian systems everywhere look the same. But I was destined to be born in the Soviet Union, and I’m doing a project about the trauma, the trauma of Soviet life, I feel it and understand it, and we lived��AEM in our time. About the “Dau” there were many rumours. Up to the wild — type that the film wanted to show once and burn film with a cinema. Or recover a piece of the Berlin wall that is deadly scared of the Germans. Admit it, it was a PR or do such radical plans existed, but life has made adjustments? In the end, are you satisfied with the form in which the project came to a wide audience?— Plans were indeed quite radical. The first was that we wanted to create a hundred cinemas around the world in big cities, in a thousand places each, in which ten films “Dau” (we thought then that there will be only ten) were to be shown only ten times, and then all the films and negative film had to be destroyed. Any theatrical production because it disappears and remains only in memory. Who says something has to last forever? We assumed that if the project is uniquely done is that it needs a unique way to display. A hundred cities, a thousand people hall, ten sessions is about a million people would see every movie. Enough audience to ensure that the project could be shown and disappear, and remain only in memories turned into a myth.Another plan regarding the Berlin wall was even almost realized, he was stopped in the last phase a week before the premiere. It was assumed that the wall will close several blocks of houses in the centre of Berlin and for more than a month, the residents of these homes and institutions — all will be in access mode, as it was in the GDR. In this area in addition to the film project “Dau” is supposed to be art installations and various performances. It had to be done to ensure that part of the world the viewer can get a more complete impression not only on the films “the Dow”, but also about himself on the inside of this sealed world. For this it was important to have a large enough space where people can get lost and find yourself again through a new experience.The film was shot in an isolated area of the “Institute”, and the creation of a similar site for rental involves other reactions, other laws and other energy. In this respect the meeting with the project “Dau” right now I think the most honest, important and perhaps even necessary.— The female lead in the film Bertolucci “Last tango in Paris” Maria Schneider several decades after the filming, said that “she felt as if she had been raped” and that this feeling subsequently ruined her life. What do you think of sex scenes and the psychological pressure of “Dau” could cause some of the performers PTSD?— Actors, professional or no, it is the people. What happens to them on the set, always a voluntary act to which they go. The film set is not a prison, it is the result of the agreement of a group of people, especially in a project as “Dau”, where all exist within a historical context, and it means there’s makeup, costumes and complicated preparation to shoot. However, throughout life can change a person’s attitude to what he was involved and what happened to him. In the project “Dau” people’s feelings were almost always real, and the reality of events was almost always playing. People have made action on the court on their own. However, all the scenes in which we see the hard violence, the underlying were discussed with all participants, people went to them with the understanding that they do.— Many people wonder why, having spent so much effort into immersing the audience into the world of the Soviet past, you are left in the mouth of characters of some modern words (“damn”, “kick”) and even songs of a later period? So, “time machine” worked only partially? What ideological and artistic sense?— “Dau” is a project primarily about the modern man. We don’t know what was the past really. We took modern people and put them in the circumstances of another time, but in a situation of a relationship they were still modern humans. The RF interference of modernity I deliberately left in all the movies. In the process of working on the sound was not difficult to change the current word in the appropriate historical context or cut out those moments when characters sing songs of a later period. But this is rarely encountered RF interference present, I think, gives a more complex understanding of what is really going on in the frame. This is a film about the past and about the present. This is a film about the genotype of the Soviet man, which so far does not exist.— As interacted with the characters camera is a wonderful operator Urges? In the role of the camera in this project?— Jurgen Jurges made more than 80 films by the time when he was at “Dau”. Among these films have become classics of world cinema, he worked with such Directors as Fassbinder, Haneke, Wenders. Urges came with a huge baggage of professional experience. But what he did in “the Dow”, is an absolute operator opening. He invented a system of lighting in which you could shoot 360 degrees at any point on a 13,000 metre set, with virtually no visible frame in the lighting. The light in the room came through a complex system of mirrors. Lighting fixture luminaries in one mirror reflected in another mirror, in the third and then just got into the room. The light can always be used��lo to adjust. Near the beginning of shooting in the Institute we decided to shoot on one camera, although I was planning to shoot two. I knew that this significantly complicates the installation in the future, but it will help to solve the more important problem — the camera has become a direct participant in the process. It was, if you like, also a character in the film. For me it was very important that the operator does not know a word in Russian, doesn’t understand what the actors say, but he feels their energy. He didn’t care what the actor says if he knew that the energy in this, then the camera switched to another character. Camera movement determined by the operator itself, we could define some reference points within the scene, but the basic decision was for Jurgen. It was such a common dance for a few people — the characters and the operator.— In a large international production included such stars of the art scene, as Marina Abramovic and Romeo Castellucci. As they are, and in their face the West enlightened the world, perceive the element of Soviet totalitarianism? How much of his psychoanalysis, its lessons are relevant in our time to the Western world? What you can bring to the project?— For Marina Abramovic Soviet totalitarianism — thing familiar. Her parents were Communists and national heroes of Yugoslavia. Many of her works explore the theme of the Communist totalitarian system. Castellucci explores the nature of man, time and his relationship with God and with the devil. Why they are so different artists. What did Castellucci, experience of relationships girls and monkeys were primarily about the generalized nature of human behavior and raised the issue that there are people as such? The project “Dau” developed at several levels and included a variety of topics. One level is the study of the Soviet totalitarian system, the other a study of human nature in General, the study of the nature of violence and cruelty as such, the fourth — the relationship with the unknown, the higher forces, as in cases of experiments with shamans, and with deep ancient traditions, such as Judaism and Christianity. Therefore, in the Institute in addition to artists and religious leaders, and shamans. It was the Soviet secret institution, which was engaged in everything connected with nonlinear view of the world. In the part where it closed the Soviet Institute, we examine totalitarianism, in the part where we delve into what these people are researching, we go beyond this issue.— If we consider the “Dau” from the point of view of the development of art and cinema, in particular, whether you think it is summarizing or intelligence in front of a new, unknown stage? What do you expect from a movie after a coronavirus? — I think “the Dow” project at a crossroads. On the other hand, p��before developing technology, methods and nonlinear ways of telling stories that become relevant only now. In this sense, the “Dow” is a bridge from the past to the future. I’m sure soon will appear a lot of projects, something similar to the Dhow, where history will be told non-linear, where reality and the game will intertwine more and more closely and which will generate large volumes of content. We don’t know what will be the movie after the coronavirus, but during the early stages, we know that almost everyone has become a filmmaker. All sit in a Zoom and I see all the time frame, like in the movies Fincher, is divided into several parts, including see themselves in this frame. Thus, any employee who is now sitting on a clock to Zoom, looks not only to his colleagues but on himself at a distance. His inner eye sees him looking at oneself and often remaining at the Zoom recording of conversation. In just a few decades everyone turned to the operator, Director and actor. Everyone knows how he looks, how he moves, he knows how to remove how to build a composition, how to view and how to return to the past.— Linked to the previous question futurological forecast. Whether last triumph of political correctness, the new Puritanism and the new censorship? Or her underlying concept outlived its usefulness? For example, “ageism”: now the old people called the boomers do not hide joy from the fact that the epidemic is taking them. Very strong and the desire to destroy reverence to the old art: we don’t need the Visconti, etc. Or all of the development comes in waves, and the pendulum will again swing in the opposite direction? And again there will be some sort of sexual revolution? — I recall the famous words: “have the beginning of the revolution, no revolution at the end.” I want to believe that it would apply not to the concept of bloody revolution, and the sexual revolution. I wish it lasted forever, because sex is about life, about the generation of life. It is clear that it is now possible to create life without sex, but nevertheless I want to believe that the traditional way of the appearance of life will continue to exist. We all know that the Renaissance culture was over, ended before our eyes. What will the culture in the future, we don’t know, but I’m sure that the culture will partially take on the role that it has played in antiquity, and which later took over religious practices. The role in which culture becomes the internal reference and a way to feel alive in another way. Probably will be new rituals, new traditions and new forms, but the stories will still be told, the images will still occur. Light in art is not necessarily the landscape, illuminated by the sun. The light worksI told art about the suffering and agony, as we know from the iconography and art of antiquity. The same applies to music, the highest cathartic experience the person experiences listening to “St. Matthew Passion” of Bach, or the Requiem of Mozart, despite the paintings of Caravaggio, Bosch or Goya. Visconti, Tarkovsky, Bergman, Antonioni, Eisenstein was not a Comedy. In different ways and in different forms, they told stories and conveyed feelings about people, feelings about the world, feelings about themselves. The movie was, is and will remain an art that studies life. In life there are different sides, and bright, and dramatic, and tragic. To push the human with strong emotions — the task of art. Tolerance can not be here. And never will be.Born on 11 August 1975 in Moscow in the family of the artist-animator Andrey Khrzhanovsky. Graduated from the directing Department VGIK (workshop Marlena hutsieva). He worked in the theater, in commercials and on television. In 1998, together with Artem Mikhalkov put the short film “Stop”.His feature film debut “4” (the scenario of Vladimir Sorokin) awarded in Rotterdam and festivals “Kinotavr” and “Spirit of fire”, is nominated for the European film Academy’s Prize.The project “Dau”, over which the Director worked for many years, was introduced in 2019 in Paris, and in 2020 at the Berlinale, where it won the prize for cinematography. Around this project, since the period of the shooting in Kharkov, there was a sharp controversy that continues to this day. In April 2020 Hrzhanovsky has been criticized by the Ukrainian media about the project and presented the concept of a National memorial “Babiy Yar” (Kiev), the artistic Director of which he is.
