Location and principles of filming

After the Leningrad and Kharkiv shooting blocks the film shoot transformed into a ‘total performance’ and ‘total installation’.^[10] This format was made possible with the support of Serguei Adoniev.^[11][12]

The project unfolded on the territory of the largest shooting location in Europe spanning 12,000m², named the Institute, built on the site of the former Dynamo Aquatic Stadium in Kharkiv, Ukraine.^[13][14]

How the location functioned and was used in the filming has suggested parallels between DAU and such projects as Synecdoche, New York and The Truman Show.^[15][16][17]

The film set was functioning 24/7, regardless if shooting was occurring.^{[18][19][20][21][22]} The DAU cinematographer Jürgen Jürges designed a special lighting system that allowed shooting at any point without setting up lighting equipment.^[23][24][25]

The territory of the Institute comprised laboratories, newspaper editorial office, a canteen, residential buildings, the First Department, a hairdresser's, maintenance staff premises; the employees were paid in Soviet rubles.^[26][27][28] For filming, 40,000 costume elements were produced and purchased.^[29][30] The architecture, costumes, everyday items, food created a phantasmagorical reconstruction of the Soviet era of the 1930s to 1960s, where the characters lived.^[31][32][33]

In November 2011 the shooting was finished and the location was destroyed, the destruction itself becoming a part of the story ^[34] The survived items(small and large props, artifacts, costumes) have been preserved and used in other DAU contexts.^[35][36][37]

Characters

The auditions for DAU involved 392,000 non-actors.^[38][39] Around 200-300 non-actors lived on-set at any one time ^[40] and around 400 were filmed including scientists, musicians, artists, composers, religious leaders and philosophers, as well as waitresses, cleaners, secret police officers, cooks and hairdressers.^{[41][42][43][44]}

The unscripted process was filmed intermittently from October 2009 to November 2011 during which no modern clothes including underwear, no modern sanitary products or any other modern objects or vocabulary were allowed on the set and period costume, make-up and hairstyles were required from everyone including the crew, regardless if shooting was occurring.^{[45][46][47][48][49][50][51]}

With no script or takes, the characters acted and reacted in the meticulously designed circumstances, sometimes staying on set for months.^{[52][53][54][55]}

'Placed in a real replica of a Soviet institute, with its authentic smells, clothes and interiors, social behavior and social dispositions, the hero feels placed in a semi-real space-time. And it's the actor who becomes the first spectator of "DAU", finding themselves between the immanence of their own presence in the present and the absurdity of someone else's, but reconstructed time and space'.^[56]

Everyone, with the exception of Dau (conductor Teodor Currentzis), his wife (actress Radmila Schegoleva), their son (as young adult - musicianNikolai Voronov), and Krupitsa, director of the institute from 1938 to 1953 (theater director Anatoly Vasiliev), lived in the Institute under their own names. Their real biographies were adapted to Soviet realities.^{[57][58][59][60]}

There were two scientific departments at the Institute. In the theoretical department contemporary theoretical physicists, neuroscientists and biologists were carrying out their research, including Profs. Nobel laureate David Gross, Fields Medal winner Shing-Tung Yau, Nikita Nekrasov, Dmitry Kaledin, Andrey Losev, Samson Shatashvili, Carlo Rovelli, Eric Verlinde, James H. Fallon, and others. Some of its results were published in academic journals.^[61][62][63] In the experimental department, headed by Alexei Blinov, media and performance contemporary artists were conducting their experiments. Among the employees and the guests of the Institute there were Marina Abramović, Carsten Höller, Boris Mikhailov, Peter Sellars, Romeo Castellucci, Rav Steinsaltz, Peruvian shaman Guillermo Arévalo and others.^[64][65][66]

The Institute hosted conferences and seminars on quantum physics, string theory and loop quantum gravity, neuroscience, as well as experiments in areas beyond traditional scientific knowledge, such as orgone energy, teleportation and human superpowers.^{[67][68][69][70]}

Movies, series, video performances

13 films of various genres were presented at the premiere of the project in Paris in 2019.^[84][85] The movies were voiced by Gérard Depardieu, Willem Dafoe, Isabelle Adjani, Fanny Ardant, Isabelle Huppert, Charlotte Rampling, Iris Berben, Hanna Schygulla, Barbara Sukowa, Katharina Thalbach, Veronica Ferres, Heike Makatsch, Toni Garrn, Lilith Stangenberg, Kathrin Angerer, Palina Rojinski, Vicky Krieps, Jella Haase, Lars Eidinger, Martin Wuttke, Blixa Bargeld, Bela B, Bill Kaulitz, Tom Schilling, Marc Hosemann, Frederick Lau, Franz Rogowski, Louis Hofmann, Sven Marquardt, Tahar Rahim, Denis Lavant, Lou de Laâge, Éric Cantona, Pascal Greggory, and Amira Casar.^[86]

A number of other products are in the process of post-production.^[87]

"Mother" film

In particular, the "mother" film, focused on the storyline of Dau himself, with the Institute material creating its background setting, has not been released yet as of 2022.^[88]

Dau. Digital

Khrzhanovsky claims that the movies are just trailers,^[89][90] of what he calls the main product - Dau.Digital, an interactive online platform presenting all 700 hours of rushes where a user is navigated by the tags and can structure their own narrative. This product was also presented to the visitors of the Paris premiere.^{[91][92][93][94][95]}

Books

Complex Installations

Complex installations have been an integral part of the project since the Institute functioned during the shooting, creating immersive experiences for visitors and residents.^{[103][104][105]}

Conferences

The conferences at Paris premiere continued a series of conferences started in London in 2017 to explore the wide range of cultural, social, and political issues raised in DAU. The DAU conferences to the date are as follows:^{[160][161][162]}

• "Import and export of the Russian revolution: ideological, political and communal exchange." (25–25 February 2017, London School of Economics and Political Science). Some of those who took part in the conference were professors Teodor Shanin, Alexander Etkind, Mark Steinberg, Simon Dixon, John Butler, Erik van Raaij, Viktoria Zhuravleva, and David Wolf.^[163][164]
• "The protagonists of political mythology: how do individuals and collectives enter into history?" (25–26 March 2017, House of Commons, Parliament of the United Kingdom, University of Westminster), with the participation of the first president of Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk, the first state secretary of Russia Gennady Burbulis, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Republic of Belarus Stanislav Shushkevich, UK Ambassador to USSR Sir Roderick Braithwaite, West German Ambassador to USSR Andreas Mayer Landrut, professors Robert Service, Linda Cook, Mark Fenster, and Judith Pallot, and others.^[165]
• "The experience of extremism: faith, violence and liberation movements." (24–26 May 2017, House of Lords, Parliament of the United Kingdom, London Royal Society), with the participation of the former Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the United Kingdom, Sir Michael David Jackson, Representative of the Government of Autonomous Kurdistan His Excellency Karvan Jamal Tahir, Colonel Vladimir Azhippo, Professor James Fallon, members of the international tribunal from the former Yugoslavia Marko Sladojević (Serbia), Amir Cengic (Bosnia), and Davor Laznic (Croatia), former publicity director at Sinn Féin Danny Morrison (Northern Ireland).

Allegations of breach of professional ethics and unfeigned violence, and denials

Criticism of the project predominantly focused on questions of transparency, work ethics, and respect for the rights of DAU participants. Critical accounts mostly contain references to the anonymous testimonies of participants involved for only a short time.^{[166][167][168]} Neither participants nor creators of the DAU material shown at the Paris premiere criticized the project.^{[169][170][171]} The project also spawned discussions about the limits of what is permissible in cinema.^[172][173]

At the premiere of the film Dau. Natasha at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2020, five Russian journalists addressed the artistic director of the festival Carlo Chatrian and the CEO Mariette Rissenbeek with an open letter expressing concern about the use of "real psychological and physical violence", in particular towards a non-professional actress Natalia Berezhnaya, and questioning the ethics of including the film in the competition.^[174] Chatrian responded that the questions were re-addressed to the production company and to the actresses, who denied the allegations; detailed responses from Khrzhanovsky, the film crew and actresses were also received at the press conference.^[175][176] Later, the accusations of the authors of the open letter were also refuted by the actress Natalia Berezhnaya in an interview to a major Iskusstvo Kino ('Film Art') magazine.^[177]

Allegations of overspending and poor organization of events

Criticism of the project also concerns unreasonable amount of resources spent to achieve artistic results that have already been achieved, such as blurring the boundaries between real and fictional, performer and character, deconstructing history and immersing in it.^[178] Criticism of the Paris premiere also included reviews of poor organization and bad navigation.^[179] The creators and some critics claim that the principle of uncertainty as an artistic element of the project and a way of interacting with the audience.^{[180][181][182]}