Neo-Nazis, Rape and Humiliation: The Russian Art Project That Got Out of Hand Did amateur actors suffer abuse under the guise of participating in the DAU extreme art experiment? BERLIN – The timing of the small demonstration in a square off Potsdamer Platz on Saturday night corresponded with the 70th Berlin International Film Festival awards ceremony taking place nearby. The protesters bore signs with slogans such as “The Berlinale supports violence and exploitation in the film industry” and “The Berlinale is choosing rape and humiliation.”
Earlier, five Russian journalists who were covering the festival published an open letter to its management, in which they expressed “deep concern” over the inclusion of the film “DAU. Natasha” in the festival’s main competition.
The DAU project was filmed from 2008 to 2011 in a vast artistic installation in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. Dozens of people – the vast majority of them not professional actors – lived in the building, which simulated a research institution in the Soviet Union in the middle of the 20th century.
They lived as if under a totalitarian regime, with clothing and accessories suitable to the period, and were filmed in the style of a never-ending reality show. All the participants were assigned “roles” – scientists, students, cooks or janitors – and they occupied those roles, without a script and without any direction in the conventional sense of the word.
The project was supposed to be opened to the general public in Berlin in 2018 as a giant exhibit that would include rebuilding part of the Berlin Wall, with many extras simulating the totalitarian world of the DAU and film clips of what had happened inside the building. But it was halted by German authorities. It ultimately opened in Paris in 2019 as an exhibition featured in a museum and two theaters. It included extras who recreated the experience of a Soviet research institution and films from footage shot during the project. Visitors were asked to obtain an “entry visa” instead of a ticket and to equip themselves with a special navigation device that piloted them through this state within a state.
Thirteen DAU films were shot at the Ukrainian facility, and two of them shown at the Berlin festival, which closed on Sunday – “DAU. Natasha,” directed by Ilya Khrzhanovskiy and Jekaterina Oertel, and “DAU. Degeneratsia,” directed by Khrzhanovskiy and Ilya Permyakov. They were re-edited especially for the festivals, and the screenings attracted a lot of media attention.
The New York Times described “Natasha” as “excellent” and “Degeneratsia” as “fluid, furious and, despite its 355-minute running time, constantly absorbing.” In contrast, Der Spiegel published a devastating review which advised Khrzhanovskiy to study “the techniques of filmmaking rather than human nature.” “DAU. Natasha,” which earned cinematographer Jürgen Jürges a Silver Bear award at the festival for Outstanding Artistic Contribution, is about two hours long and takes place in the early 1950s. It includes a scene in which the heroine, a cafeteria worker, has drunken sex with a visiting French scientist at the institute, as well as a scene of a fight between the heroine and one of her subordinates. Some of the many eccentric moments in the film include neo-Nazis ripping up large sheets of paper, lectures given by Hasidic Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz and an Orthodox priest as well as shamanistic rituals But the most controversial scene is when the heroine is interrogated/recruited as an informant by a KBG officer. The latter is played by a real former KGB officer, who in the past conducted many interrogations of this kind at a Kharkiv prison. The officer, Vladimir Azhippo, abuses Natasha, slaps her, violently strips her, pushes her head into the toilet and finally forces her to insert a bottle into her vagina.......
Poster Comment:
The NYTimes just loves this stinking mess. What more need be said?
I've had to face the fact this weekend, 10 times more than usual, that large nations are made of war and full of people whose citizen identity is totally wrapt up in it -- even if they've never 'served'. Certainly ameriKans are traumatized if you take the baby bottle of war glory and soteriology away from 'em.