Dau (Ilya Khrzhanovsky, 2019)

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Kirkinson
Joined: Wed Dec 15, 2004 5:34 am
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Dau (Ilya Khrzhanovsky, 2019)

#1 Post by Kirkinson » Sat Oct 29, 2011 10:28 pm

There's a fascinating and somewhat alarming article in GQ about Dau, the film Ilya Khrzhanovsky has been working on since he made 4:
Five years ago, a relatively unknown (and unhinged) director began one of the wildest experiments in film history. Armed with total creative control, he invaded a Ukrainian city, marshaled a cast of thousands and thousands, and constructed a totalitarian society in which the cameras are always rolling and the actors never go home...

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Roger Ryan
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Re: New Films in Production

#2 Post by Roger Ryan » Sun Oct 30, 2011 1:28 pm

Thanks for the link - this sounds like Kaufman's SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK done for real!

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Re: New Films in Production

#3 Post by stroszeck » Sun Oct 30, 2011 7:41 pm


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skuhn8
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DAU (Ilya Khrzhanovsky, 2014)

#4 Post by skuhn8 » Mon Apr 29, 2013 2:55 am

Anyone heard about this one? Just started dating a Russian gal that has been working on this as subtitler/translator/transcriber since 2010 and sounds like a real wild project.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dau_(film" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;)

Dau is a Russian film directed by Ilya Khrzhanovsky. The film deals with the life of the Nobel Prize winning Soviet scientist Lev Landau. The movie is one of Russia's largest and most controversial cinematic projects.

The preparation for the shooting for the film began in 2006, whereas the actual shooting started in 2008 and went on for three years. The world premiere of the movie was intended to take place at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival but was rescheduled to L’Atelier du Festival at Cannes in May 2014. It is currently in post-production.

The film was shot at various sites in Russia, Ukraine, Germany, United Kingdom and Denmark. Most of the film was shot on a specially constructed set called The Institute in Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine. The Institute was the largest film set in Europe, the area totalling 12,000 sq. meters. The set was a dynamic creative reconstruction of a Soviet restricted-access Institute in 1938-1968, located in Moscow. The destruction of the set became an integral part of the story and was shot on the 8th November 2011. Teodor Currentzis, a Greek classical conductor plays the title role of Dau while Radmila Shchegoleva, the only professional actor in the cast plays his wife. Cast: Anatoly Vasiliev, Dmitry Chernyakov, Alexei Blinov, Olga Shkabarnya, Peter Sellars, Romeo Castellucci, Carsten Höller, Marina Abramović, David Gross, Shing-Tung Yau, Nikita Nekrasov, Carlo Rovelli, James Fallon, and others. The film also has had as many as 300,000 extras.

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Kirkinson
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Re: DAU (Ilya Khrzhanovsky, 2014)

#5 Post by Kirkinson » Mon Apr 29, 2013 5:49 am

There was an article about it in GQ in November 2011 that made the whole project sound insanely unbelievable, as though Khrzhanovsky had built his own little totalitarian country from scratch and appointed himself dictator. I half-wondered at the time whether it would ever be completed or whether he would just keep finding more and more completion funds to keep "The Institute" running indefinitely while he just got crazier and crazier.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: DAU (Ilya Khrzhanovsky, 2014)

#6 Post by Mr Sausage » Mon Apr 29, 2013 6:33 am

I thought Khrzhanovsky and Sorokin's last collaboration, 4, was fascinating, but it sounds to me like the making of the film is going to be more interesting than the film itself.

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zedz
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Re: DAU (Ilya Khrzhanovsky, 2014)

#7 Post by zedz » Mon Apr 29, 2013 4:09 pm

The whole project sounds too crazy to be truly great, but too crazy to be truly bad. There was lots of good stuff in 4, even though I felt it ultimately turned into a bit of a shambles, and on the strength of that I wouldn't have thought Khrzhanovsky would be the right person to deliver on a project of this magnitude. I'm really looking forward to it, but not as much as I'm looking forward to the making-of.

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The Fanciful Norwegian
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Re: DAU (Ilya Khrzhanovsky, 2014)

#8 Post by The Fanciful Norwegian » Sun Oct 25, 2015 5:57 pm

A status update. The film is (still) in post-production in London, and even there Khrzhanovsky has turned his base of operations into a bizarre private kingdom, with life-sized dummies in trenchcoats and Russian security guards snapping photos of visitors. Not much here to give succor to those hoping to see this movie in their own lifetimes, though to some extent I think Khrzhanovsky and Co. are using the project's reputation to have a little fun:
From the seven hundred hours of footage shot in Kharkiv, [producer Susanne Marian] said, the editors in London are fashioning a dozen or more movies, a TV series, and a user-directed internet narrative system. I asked her for an example of the kind of scene they had in the can.

‘A man telling his wife how he cheated on her,’ she said. ‘It lasts for five hours.’

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John Cope
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Re: Trailers for Upcoming Films

#9 Post by John Cope » Thu Jul 12, 2018 4:02 am

Finally, Dau is near (as a friend put it, what we'd really like to see is a Burden of Dreams for Dau--now that would really be something).

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Omensetter
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Re: Trailers for Upcoming Films

#10 Post by Omensetter » Mon Jul 16, 2018 11:30 am

Here's a direct link to the film's website---https://dau.xxx/.

It's been so long that a Burden of Dreams-style documentary (coupled with praise from those whose job it is to watch festival films) would go a long way toward me watching thirteen feature films from a director who still only has one feature. The project has always been a must read, but now that the thing is actually incoming I'm going to need more than insane ambition to watch something from the still-unknown Ilya Khrzhanovsky.

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domino harvey
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Re: Trailers for Upcoming Films

#11 Post by domino harvey » Mon Jul 16, 2018 11:34 am

Where is the trailer? I scrolled through that IW story three times and still didn't see it

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dda1996a
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Re: Trailers for Upcoming Films

#12 Post by dda1996a » Mon Jul 16, 2018 11:37 am

You have to visit the website linked above your post.
Anyway, holy shit. I thought this was never going to come out. I've been checking up on this every year or so, so glad to finally see it is coming out in one way or another

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furbicide
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Re: Dau (Ilya Khrzhanovsky, 2018)

#13 Post by furbicide » Mon Jul 16, 2018 11:52 am

Autumn this year? I’ll believe it when I see it! Thirteen films is crazy, though.

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Re: Dau (Ilya Khrzhanovsky, 2018)

#14 Post by Cde. » Thu Jul 19, 2018 1:13 pm

The 'Berlin Paris London' tease and 'a new way to experience the institute is being developed' make me wonder if this is linked to some kind of interactive exhibition.

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domino harvey
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Re: Dau (Ilya Khrzhanovsky, 2018)

#15 Post by domino harvey » Thu Jul 19, 2018 1:20 pm

That was my impression, or maybe an app like Mosaic

Cde.
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Re: Dau (Ilya Khrzhanovsky, 2018)

#16 Post by Cde. » Thu Jul 19, 2018 2:24 pm

I think an app is inevitable, they have to justify the enormous expense and excess of footage somehow, and let's be real, no one wants to watch 13 films and multiple series of this.

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solaris72
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Re: Dau (Ilya Khrzhanovsky, 2018)

#17 Post by solaris72 » Thu Jul 19, 2018 10:12 pm

Cde. wrote:
Thu Jul 19, 2018 2:24 pm
and let's be real, no one wants to watch 13 films and multiple series of this.
I guess My Name Is Nobody.

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Re: Dau (Ilya Khrzhanovsky, 2018)

#18 Post by Cde. » Fri Jul 20, 2018 4:59 am

solaris72 wrote:
Thu Jul 19, 2018 10:12 pm
Cde. wrote:
Thu Jul 19, 2018 2:24 pm
and let's be real, no one wants to watch 13 films and multiple series of this.
I guess My Name Is Nobody.
Correction: nobody outside of criterionforum.org wants to watch 13 films and multiple series of this.

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dda1996a
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Re: Dau (Ilya Khrzhanovsky, 2018)

#19 Post by dda1996a » Fri Jul 20, 2018 7:14 am

Don't forget blu-ray forum users, cinephiles with no internet, 50+ who will go to whatever is playing in the nearest cinematheque, and those who are curious about Russian history and insane productions.
I can see myself watching all 13 if they are continuously engrossing and worth it. As a Greenaway fan I watched all three Tulse Luper films and the recombined cut. Don't underestimate the strength of OCD and completionists' wills.(that got me through many auteur-directed drivel)

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John Cope
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Re: Dau (Ilya Khrzhanovsky, 2018)

#20 Post by John Cope » Fri Jul 20, 2018 5:39 pm

dda1996a wrote:
Fri Jul 20, 2018 7:14 am
As a Greenaway fan I watched all three Tulse Luper films and the recombined cut.
And those were often torture (and I say that as a Greenaway fan too).

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dda1996a
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Re: Dau (Ilya Khrzhanovsky, 2018)

#21 Post by dda1996a » Fri Jul 20, 2018 6:00 pm

I sort of enjoyed them, even though they got progressively worst. But as anyone who followed Greenaway from his Luper shorts, watching him place his entire career and films through Luper was pretty great. Also. I'm a sucker for lists which is one of many reasons I love Greenaway.
I do hope they at least made or are making a documentary about this insane project. Most interesting of all is how the hell this unknown director managed to talk his way into and out of this project.

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Re: Dau (Ilya Khrzhanovsky, 2018)

#22 Post by Cde. » Sat Jul 21, 2018 3:25 pm

dda1996a wrote:
Fri Jul 20, 2018 6:00 pm
Most interesting of all is how the hell this unknown director managed to talk his way into and out of this project.
Well, if you read the GQ article, it sounds like magnetism and convincing people to go along with his will has always been his talent.

Also, he sounds like a fucking monster.

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The Fanciful Norwegian
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Re: Dau (Ilya Khrzhanovsky, 2018)

#23 Post by The Fanciful Norwegian » Thu Jan 10, 2019 11:06 am

Opens in Paris on January 24th... as a 24-hours-a-day "interactive event," with tickets ("visas") running from €35 for six hours to a €150 unlimited pass. Brian Eno has created "bespoke artistic architecture" and "Catholic and Orthodox priests, rabbis and scholars of the Jewish faith, Muslim clergy and scholars of Islam, Tibetan Buddhists, leaders of the Sikh community, theologians, philosophers, shamanic practitioners, artists and social workers will also be part of the live installation." There is a brief mention of the feature film near the end, plus "a couple of TV series."

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MichaelB
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Re: Dau (Ilya Khrzhanovsky, 2018)

#24 Post by MichaelB » Thu Jan 10, 2019 2:14 pm

And coming to London in April, I see.

I daresay I’ll have to catch it at some point.

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DeprongMori
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Re: Dau (Ilya Khrzhanovsky, 2018)

#25 Post by DeprongMori » Thu Jan 10, 2019 2:53 pm

Cde. wrote:
Thu Jul 19, 2018 2:24 pm
and let's be real, no one wants to watch 13 films and multiple series of this.
Not so fast! Isn’t that exactly what they’ve successfully done with the Marvel Comics Universe?

(Tongue only half in cheek here.)

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