Hyperkino is a standardized system of referencing and annotating films on digital carriers – attaching related content and analysis to individual frames.
[…] The tradition of scholarly editions provides sophisticated ways of preserving texts over centuries, keeping them alive in constantly evolving receptions and commentaries.
[2] Digital humanities scholar Christian Gosvig Olesen stresses the importance of the analytical and theoretical phase preceding practical steps towards developing and designing the Hyperkino method: “In 2006 Drubek and Izvolov penned an article together that formulated this vision, Critical Editions of Films on Digital Formats, which was published in the eighth edition of the international film studies review Cinema & Cie.[3] in the fall of 2006.”
In 2008 Drubek produced a Hyperkino DVD in Berlin and Prague, publishing Nikolai Izvolov's reconstruction of Lev Kuleshov’s until then unpublished first film: Proekt inzhenera Praita.
The film to launch the format was Lev Kuleshov’s debut feature Proekt inzhenera Prayta (Engineer Prite’s Project), USSR, 1918).
[7] The DVD contains the TV documentary The Kuleshov Effect (USSR, 1969) by Semyon Raitburt (ЭФФЕКТ КУЛЕШОВА, 1969, Семён Райтбурт).
In the following years around a dozen of Hyperkino DVDs were released by the Russian publisher RUSCICO under the series title “Kino Academia” containing the annotations of international film scholars specializing in Russian and Soviet film: Aleksandr Deriabin, Natascha Drubek, Bernard Eisenschitz, Jeremy Hicks, Nikolai Izvolov, Ekaterina Khokhlova, Milena Musina, Sergei Kapterev, Natalia Riabchikova, and Yuri Tsivian.
The three DVDs were: In the same year Hyperkino received another award from the Russian Guild of Film Critics and Scholars, the “Elephant 2010” (Kinovedenie i kinokritika v elektronnych SMI, novye technologii).
They can also be more scholarly – the notes on Strike especially are full of references to sources both printed and archival – indicating to the scholar/student viewer where to do further research.