December 24, 2011

"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."
Life on the project has a way of sucking people in. Since 2008, more than a few crew members stopped pretending this was a temporary gig and have moved to Kharkov. Most are fresh out of film school, but several have left behind serious careers. Some moved their families to Kharkov. Others started new families right here....
"The Movie Set That Ate Itself" by Michael Idov. (This essay was pointed out in David Brooks's "Sidney Awards" column, which talks about a couple other things that I'd blog if it were not Christmas Eve Day. They are too horrible to mention today.)

ADDED: But Instapundit just mentioned one of them.

8 comments:

Carnifex said...

Larry Niven's Known Space series has a period in Earths' future were organ harvesting is used to punish convicted criminals, the organs obviously used to extend the life of the voting public. As a result, even jay-walking becomes a death penalty offense. One of the most heinous crimes is organ-legging, were some innocent person would be kidnapped and their parts sold on the black market. The penalty for organ-legging was of course to have yourself harvested.

edutcher said...

Just guessing here (link to the essay is bad), I'd suspect being part of a never-ending movie would make many nostalgic for the Great Patriotic War since Kharkov went through the tortures of the damned during WWII.

Jose_K said...

which talks about a couple other things that I'd blog if it were not Christmas Eve Day... Spielberg mentioned the other and linked it to Xmas.

Scott M said...

I'll go over and check out the whole link when I get a chance later today. Is this the Stanford Prison experiment writ large?

ricpic said...

What about the native bitter clingers in Kharkov, did they have a say in this imposition? Of course not. The "needs" of the so-called creative trump the ordinary decencies everywhere and every time.

deborah said...

The article link works, but the phrase it's in is broken into two halves.

Bizarre article.

Ann Althouse said...

Link fixed. Sorry.

Mitch H. said...

It's basically Synecdoche, NY without the sense of irony, and with a strong element of totalitarian iconography instead, right?