By Vlada Lodesk, Graduate Student, The Media School Ivanna is a young Nenets woman. A mother of five children. A nomad that lives in the severe northern Arctic tundra. The image that immediately pops up in our minds following such a description has been constructed by documentary filmmaking for years—starting from the iconic Flaherty’s film… Read more »
Depictions of Life in the Arctic Circle: Natalija Yefimkina’s “Garagenvolk”
By Victoria Henretty, Graduate Student, Russian & East European Institute In one of the opening scenes of Garagenvolk, two men tow a dilapidated school bus, a hilarious feat as they navigate rows of metal garages. Backing up the truck again and again, while only narrowly avoiding the garages, the men yell profanities back and forth…. Read more »
Film Screening: “Garazhane (Garagenvolk)”
By Ani Abrahamyan, Graduate Student in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures “Будь проклят этот проклятый гараж!” “Be damned this damn garage!” —from Eldar Ryazanov’s tragicomedy Garazh (1980) Screened as part of the “Portraits in Permafrost: Cinema of the Russian Arctic” film series at Indiana University, Nataliia Yefimkina’s Garazhane (Garagenvolk, 2020)… Read more »
Russian Orthodox Church on the Ukraine Conflict: Where Can the Church Go From Here?
This is the first in a series of blog posts prepared by students in Professor Regina Smyth’s Y332 Russian Politics class. By Aidan Hale The Russian invasion of Ukraine five weeks ago sent shockwaves around the world. Horrifying images and atrocities are continuing to surface as Russian troops begin to retreat, prompting numerous religious leaders… Read more »
LONG FAREWELL. Sergei Loznitsa’s Anti-Soviet crusade.
By Stanislav Menzelevskyi, Graduate Student, The Media School Sergei Loznitsa is one of the most prolific and most recognized post-Soviet Ukrainian film directors. His feature fiction and documentary films are regularly screened and awarded at A-class film festivals around the world. Born in Belarus, he moved to the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, where he finished high… Read more »
Film Screening “Kolyma: Road of Bones”
By Eliza Frenkel, Graduate Student, Anthropology In the old Soviet comedy “The Diamond Arm” (1969) the following saying became very popular among Soviet citizens. — Будете у нас на Колыме, милости просим. — When you will be in Kolyma, you are so welcome.— — Нет уж, лучше вы к нам. — No, you’d better come to… Read more »
Film Screening: “Truba” (“Pipeline”)
By Andrey Yushkov, Graduate Student, O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs On September 23, Truba (Pipeline), an award-winning documentary by Vitaly Mansky, became the first screening in the RSW Documentary Film Series Power, Poetics, and Play: Documenting Soviet Legacies. The documentary explores the lives of various communities along the pipeline which transports gas from… Read more »
Film Screening: “Setting Off with Malcolm”
By Noah Amir Arjomand, Postdoctoral Scholar in Global Media, Development, and Democracy Russian artist and disability activist Jerry Mercury goes beyond paying tribute to Malcolm X in “Setting Off with Malcolm”–he personally embodies the civil rights icon’s martyrdom. The 22-minute film consists of Mercury reflecting on how Malcolm inspired him and reading excerpts from his hero’s… Read more »
Film Screening: “VOY”
By Iain Cunningham, Graduate Student, Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures It is not often that we are confronted by a genre of film that bears familiarity to us while maintaining its ability to instill contemplation, to appear to us as strange and novel. VOY is certainly such a film. Directed by… Read more »
Reflections on the RSW event “Promoting Inclusion and Appreciating Diversity in Today’s Russia: Global Trends and Local Realities”
By Dafna Rachok, PhD student in Anthropology It is not a secret that concepts travel through time and places and often get vernacularized and reshaped. To find out how the idea of inclusion is understood and employed in contemporary Russia, on April 16th, a panel of experts gathered to tackle the question of diversity and… Read more »