Engineering Red () is a 1993 Russian surrealist part-documentary/part-narrative film by Andrey Yi and animator Armen Petrosyan.
The script is based on Thomas Mann's novel The Magic Mountain (1924) and the idea of creating artificial people in the Soviet Union (in the 1940-1950s).
Plot The film is divided into three chapters and has two storylines—documentary and fiction.
The fictional part of the film consists of psychedelic scenes: a red room, a girl in red silk, kaleidoscopic images. A female voice-over reads an excerpt from The Magic Mountain, in which the thoughts of a deceased soldier are heard (his consciousness is still in a dead body), sounding his reflections on Christ, the Apostles, and the Bible. The soldier's body then falls prey to necrophiliac children.
The documentary part talks about medicine, like pig heart transplant, cadaveric blood transfusion, a story of conjoined twins, etc.
History of creation
References