Feslett Filmklub – DAU. Natasha (Ilja Krzanovszkij & Jekaterina Oertel, 2020)
As part of the Feslett Film Club, we screen obscure cinematic gems that are rarely or never shown, and are difficult or impossible to find.
Schedule
"Natasha runs the cafeteria at a secret Soviet research institute. Every night she gets drunk and treats her subordinate, Olga, terribly. One night, she sleeps with a French researcher who is visiting the institute; as a result, the secret police torture her the next day and force her to cooperate. The film is a radical and provocative tale of violence.
DAU. is perhaps the most ambitious artistic project in film history. In the mid-2000s, director Ilya Krzhanovsky recreated an authentic replica of the secret Soviet research institute—where Nobel Prize-winning Russian physicist Lev Landau (1908–1968) worked—in Kharkiv, Ukraine, using a set nearly the size of a city. More than four hundred people chose the Soviet 1960s over the present-day Ukraine and moved in to live their lives as specific characters 24 hours a day. Throughout the two-year experiment, the director continuously filmed with 35mm cameras, and the pre-conceived stories were shaped by the relationships between the characters. The first feature film to be released from the 700 hours of footage is *DAU. Natasha*, which won the Silver Bear at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival."
