What if the Beatles chatted with each other on WhatsApp?

"1968 is the most important year of the 20th century, which made the world the way we now know it,” says Mikhail Zygar, the man behind the idea 1968.digital. “In 1968 the Internet was invented, and the sexual revolution, the revolution in music and fashion finally took form. In the USSR, the dissident movement was born, the human rights activism of Andrei Sakharov, the harassment of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, started. After the Prague Spring, the authority in the international arena that the USSR had previously was lost.”

The Russia Beyond website continues:

"The year is 1968. Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes his new novel in iPhone Notes; the Beatles chat with each other on WhatsApp; Andy Warhol posts photos from his exhibitions on Instagram. Today, a group of Russian journalists are using a post-modern way of storytelling to depict what happened 50 years ago, and we can’t get enough of it.

“The bulk of contemporary life takes place in virtual reality - there is a huge world behind the screens of mobile phones,” says Karen Shainyan, one of the show’s creators. Together with another famous Russian journalist, Mikhail Zygar, and the famous filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov, they decided to use this method of storytelling to show the life of real historical personalities through the screens of their would-be smartphones.

It’s an alternative reality of messengers, social networks, YouTube videos and Google Maps - as if they existed in 1968. The documental media is mixed with technological fiction, creating a unique mockumentary with an accurate factual basis. Obviously, it’s better viewed from a smartphone because the aspect ratio is vertical."

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Click here to go directly to the 168.digital website

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