Boris Yukhananov
Video director. One of the founders of Parallel Cinema movement. The first thing that needs to be emphasized, is that he is not involved in the cinema. Ukhananov is the first to point this out. Cinema and video are different art forms. Ukhananov calls his whole video production as a "video novel in a thousand cassettes". That is, it is an uninterrupted work (the end of which is foreseen in the distant future), and divided up like a novel is, into chapters. Ukhananov works on each chapter in different capacities, from the point of view of the director in one, from the actor's point of view in another, from a stylistic point of view and so on... Ukhananov has also introduced the concept of the 'matrix'. The whole video novel - is a 'megamatrix'. The 'matrix' is material from one of the chapters, a complete literate expression. But Ukhananov plans to work with the 'matrix' further, and create 'variations'. The journey from the 'matrix' to the 'variants' is carried out by 'postructuralist editing'.
Speaking at the Leningrad conference 'Youth Culture' in 1988, Ukhananov said:
"...Firstly I should say a few words about video authoring. The video author combines or strives to combine the work of the cameraman and director as the key person who drives, determines the composition and development of video creation. It is even possible to say that the creation of a video is conducive with the striving of the camera to merge with the video author.
"I identify three levels of this merging. We will call this object... a video centaur, and describe three different ways in which it appears: video-eye, video-body and video-hand... Generally speaking these are completely different principles of inter-relationships with the world and the camera.
Ukhananov is one of the CINEFANTOM journal's editors; he manages the 'converstaions on video' section.
Ukhananov doesn't stop with what he has already done. Recently he began to work with a new concept - 'fatal edit'. This is editing inside the video camera. The technology can be described as follows: the 'matrix' is filmed, then the cassette is not taken out of the camera, but new material is filmed in 'dabs' on top of the already existing, shot video. As a result, a ready video film is taken out of the video camera.
Ukhananov also teaches. The 'Free University' was formed in Leningrad in 1988 - this was the first independent university in the USSR which provided a humanitarian education. The university has theatrical studios, a film and video production department, a literature department, a history of art department, a painting department and a music department. Ukhananov heads the department of individual film and video direction, where he teaches together with other patricians and theoreticians of parallel cinema.
