Costume for the King of the Ondines from a 1974 production of
Ondine at the
Comédie-Française, designed by
Chloé Obolensky (via).
“Don’t clap too loudly—it’s a very old world.”
— Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard
I CAN’T BELIEVE DAU IS FINALLY MAKING ITSELF KNOWN TO THE PUBLIC
I THOUGHT THIS DAY WOULD NEVER COME. Genuinely, I thought Khrzhanovsky would just kind of keep doing this until he died or his patron stopped funding it (or the whole thing got busted up as an elaborate cover for money laundering or what have you), and then it would just end, and nobody would see the footage for another forty years or something. There are THIRTEEN FILMS SO FAR. There is talk of a TELEVISION SERIES. I am…overwhelmed….imagine using a single camera and cameraman to film an entire fiefdom of hundreds of people over 5 years and then cutting together tens of different projects out of what you get from that.
[CW in the first link for some allusions to filmed situations involving sex or abuse in which the degree to which anything is being simulated or not, and the conditions of participants’ consent, is often unclear]
It became less a film set than a parallel world: a functioning mini-state, stuck in the mid-20th century and sealed off from the modern world. Dau was populated with hundreds of extras, or “participants”, who lived as faithfully as possible as Soviet citizens. The period authenticity was obsessive, covering clothes (even down to the underwear), hairstyles, food packaging, cigarette brands. What is more, time moved forwards inside Dau, from 1938 to 1968, so all the period detail was continually updated. Participants were paid in Russian roubles, which could be spent on set. (Some of the older extras, playing caretakers, smuggled in their own roubles saved from the Soviet era and tried to spend them; they were reprimanded for using “fake” money.)
There are going to be premieres, immersive exhibits, etc. for the alternate universe created here as well as some of the films in London, Paris, and Berlin (hence, I suppose, the wall), so like…..everybody there should probably brace for Weird. To wit:
The brainchild of Russian film director Ilya Khrzhanovsky, who also paid 400 people to live for three years in a recreation of the Stalin-era Soviet Union, Dau Freedom would have immersed visitors in a totalitarian regime in the heart of a city once home to both Nazi and communist states.
Designers promised a game-like experience in which visitors would apply for a visa to enter another country stuck behind an 800-metre (2,600ft) mock-up of the wall that divided the German capital for nearly three decades.
The installation was to open for four weeks from mid-October, to coincide with the world premiere of Khrzhanovsky’s long-anticipated film set in a fictional but functioning Soviet research institute in north-eastern Ukraine.
But it now hangs in the balance after Berlin authorities announced they were rejecting the application on safety grounds.
“This was never about whether or not the project makes sense, that was never any of our business,” said Matthias Tang, a spokesperson for the Berlin authorities. “The timescale was simply too short. Such a big project can’t be realised in two months.”
I am going to be following Dau’s progress through the capitals of Western Europe with the closest of attention.
“In all television series, characters begin as a writer’s vision, and then the actors are in place, and over the course of time, the actors become sort of unwitting collaborators by their personalities and the way they work. Armin and I have worked together on stage. We’ve had the same kind of background as actors. We like to work the same way, and we enjoy each other immensely. So it just naturally evolved, and it is particularly gratifying to both of us that [the relationship between Odo and Quark] became such a popular part of the show.”
– Rene Auberjonois
“The writers had set up some common comic elements: a tall man and a small man, a man who was emotionless and a man who was overly emotional. It’s a natural affinity. And Rene and I had an affinity. I didn’t know any of the other actors when we started, but Rene and I had worked together in the play The Petrified Forest. So there was already this chemistry. It’s a little like Bogart and Bacall. And my teeth aren’t Bogart.”
– Armin Shimerman
morethanyouseem replied to your link “A Star Is Born”
Also just managed to watch it this past weekend after only hearing good things, and it was good! And by good I mean an enjoyable film that makes me want to start listening to Gaga again because I was reminded how amazing her voice is. Also the second half of the movie was a tragedy, but I never saw any of the originals so maybe I should have had a better idea going in.
Really it would have been measurably harder to sell me on going to this were it not for a friend who’s seen the Garland version telling me how it ends and me perking RIGHT up with, quote, and spoiler warning if you’re a musical person, “Shit it’s got a Company ending??” (well the only valid ending interpretation for Company)
spaceoperetta replied to your link “A Star Is Born”
I actually cried at Shallow (though not for the rest of the film)
I’ll cry just listening to regular songs while I’m cleaning my table or whatever, so, nearly lost a contact.
