ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the director, producer and writer Boris Yukhananov reflects on the origins of the Parallel Cinema movement and its publication Cine-Fantom, which he co-founded with Gleb and Igor' Aleinikov in the 1980s. Yukhananov’s work covers different media and spans the period of Stagnation, of perestroika and the 1990s; since the 2000s he has moved into the mainstream scene, taking on the headship of the Stanislavsky Drama Theatre in Moscow and turning it into the ‘Stanislavsky Electrotheatre’, which has become a central platform for alternative art. Yukhananov’s involvement in the underground culture of Cine-Fantom and Parallel Cinema allows him to assess with insider knowledge the significance of artistic ‘margins’ for the present. Yukhananov links the sense of the death of an empire of the perestroika era to a particular and unique energy that fascinates the contemporary generation.
