Spring 2018



February 1, 5:30-7:30 pm, B126, HW.
Misha Melnichenko. "Personal Diaries in the Digital Era." A lecture and presentation of prozhito.org (in English and Russian).

February 15, 5:30-7:30 pm, B126, HW.
Holocaust: A Wallpaper Glue? (Russia, 2013), a documentary by Mumin Shakirov, followed by Q&A with the filmmaker.

February 20, 6:00-7:30 pm, 8th Floor Faculty Lounge, HW.
Linor Goralik. Found Life. Poems, Stories, Comics, a Play and an Interview. A bilingual reading and book talk with the author and translator Maya Vinokour.

March 15, 4:30-6 pm, B126, HW.
Polina Barskova, Ilya Bernshteyn & Matvei Yankelevich. "Don't Look There!" Readers of the Siege of Leningrad in 2018.

March 20, 5:30-7:30 pm, B126, HW.
The Ambassador's Daughter, Emlen Knight Davies: a Photographic Journey, Moscow, 1937-1938. Presented by her daughter, Mia Grosjean. 

April 30. 5:30-7:30 pm, Hemmerdinger Screening Center, Room 706 (Library), Hunter East Building.
Leo Tolstoy and Dziga Vertov: A Double Portrait in the Interior of the Era (Russia, 2015; 57 min.), a documentary by Galina and Anna Evtushenko, followed by Q&A.

May 7. 5-7 pm, Hemmerdinger Screening Center, Room 706 (Library), Hunter East Building.
Moving Lyrics - 2018. International student festival of short films. Screening and award ceremony.

May 15. 5-7 pm, B126, HW.
Elena Kostyuchenko. "Russia's Invisible Communities in Investigative Journalism."
MISHA MELNICHENKO. "PERSONAL DIARIES IN THE DIGITAL ERA" (in English and Russian). Feb. 1, 5:30-7:30 pm, B126, HW. Misha Melnichenko is a Russian historian, archivist and publisher, author of Soviet Jokes: A Plot Index (Moscow: NLO, 2014), which features as many as 5,856 annotated political jokes from 1918 to 1991. In 2014, he launched the PROZHITO project (literally, “lived through”): an online archive of personal diaries, which has by now collected, digitized and published 850 texts in Russian and Ukrainian, or 270,000 daily entries from the 18th century to the present. Melnichenko will talk about his work on the project as an archivist and publisher, its team of volunteers, and the fates of personal diaries in the digital age.
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HOLOCAUST: A WALLPAPER GLUE? (RUSSIA, 2013), a documentary by MUMIN SHAKIROV, followed by Q&A. Feb. 15, 5:30 pm, B126 HW. Twin sisters from the Vladimir Oblast, age 21, dream of becoming famous and making it in Moscow. They participate in the popular Muz-TV quiz show "Amazingly Beautiful." When asked "What is Holocaust?" they answer: "Glue for wallpaper." The episode indeed makes them famous overnight. In March, 2012, the journalist Mumin Shakirov invited the Karatygin sisters for a talk at the Moscow office of Radio Free Europe and decided to take them on a trip to Auschwitz. The film that results from it is a moving journey from Moscow to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum and forever transforms its carefree but deeply compassionate protagonists.
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LINOR GORALIK. FOUND LIFE. POEMS, STORIES, COMICS, A PLAY AND AN INTERVIEW. A reading and book talk with the author and her translator Maya Vinokour. Feb. 20, 6-7:30 pm, 8th Floor Faculty Lounge, HW. One of the first Russian writers to make a name for herself on the Internet, Goralik writes conversational short works that conjure the absurd in all its forms, reflecting post-Soviet life and daily universals. Her mastery of the minimal, including a wide range of experiments in different forms of micro-prose, is on full display in this collection of poems, stories, comics, a play, and an interview, here translated for the first time. In Found Life, just released by the Russian Library of Columbia University Press, speech, condensed to the extreme, captures a vivid picture of fleeting interactions in a quickly moving world. Goralik's works evoke an unconventional palette of moods and atmospheres - slight doubt, subtle sadness, vague unease - through accumulation of unexpected details and command over colloquial language. While calling up a range of voices, her works are marked by a distinct voice, simultaneously slightly naïve and deeply ironic. She is a keen observer of the female condition, recounting gendered tribulations with awareness and amusement. From spiritual rabbits and biblical zoos to poems about loss and comics about poetry, Goralik's colorful language and pervasive dark comedy capture the heights of ridiculousness and the depths of grief.
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POLINA BARSKOVA, ILYA BERNSHTEYN & MATVEI YANKELEVICH. "DON'T LOOK THERE!" READERS OF THE SIEGE OF LENINGRAD IN 2018. March 15, 4:30-6 pm, B126 HW. A conversation with scholars and publishers of the unlikely configurations of the unlikely Siege texts. While the recently published volume The Blockade: A Reader (A&B Press, 2018) puts together various narratives of the Siege to introduce the topic to the wider and younger audience, the bilingual anthology Written in the Dark: Five Poets in the Siege of Leningrad (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2016) looks at the Siege through the prism of avant-garde poetry (both books will be available for sale). Polina Barskova (Hampshire College), Ilya Bernshteyn (A&B Press) and Matvei Yankelevich (Ugly Duckling Presse) will discuss the intended readership of these difficult yet urgent publications, as well as the overall task of publishing evidence of traumatic history. 
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THE AMBASSADOR'S DAUGHTER, EMLEN KNIGHT DAVIES: A PHOTOGRAPHIC JOURNEY, MOSCOW, 1937-1938. Presented by her daughter, MIA GROSJEAN. March 20, 5:30-7:30 pm, B126, HW. Emlen Knight Davies (1916-2014) arrived in Moscow on January 19, 1937, when she was 21 years old. She had taken her senior year off from Vassar College to accompany her father, FDR’s new Ambassador to the Soviet Union Joseph E. Davies and her stepmother, Marjorie Post, to observe “the Russian experiment” first hand, to immerse herself in the Russian language and to take classes at the Russian Juridical Institute in the building that is now Rachmaninoff Concert Hall. Emlen Knight’s archive is an extraordinary account of her time in the Soviet Union in 1937-1938. Her photos of everyday life in Russia from street scenes to dinners in Spaso House, the ambassador’s residence, or The Spiridonovka, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Reception Center (still in use today), are amazingly perceptive. Her stories, recounted with the aid of her diary and letters, and her clear recollections are extraordinary. It is easy to say that my mother’s strong American identity was significantly touched by her time in the former Soviet Union. One hears it in her letters and diaries and sees it in the photographs and scrapbooks.

I will take the audience on a “walk about” with her using photos from her albums from 1937-1938 Moscow and the Embassy’s Dacha outside of the city. I will use her captions from letters and diaries, as well as from our interviews together. The presentation will reveal the identity, interests and concerns of a 21-year-old young American in the glaring spotlight of the U.S. Embassy at the very beginning of U.S.-Soviet relations, all the while faced with the looming inevitability of a European war hanging over everyone’s head like a Damocles sword. The talk will be based on the exhibition that was held at the Spaso House in Moscow and funded by the U.S. Embassy in 2008.
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Leo Tolstoy and Dziga Vertov: A Double Portrait in the Interior of the Era (Russia, 2015; 57 min.), a documentary by Galina and Anna Evtushenko. April 30, 5:30-7:30 pm. Hemmerdinger Screening Center, Room 706 (Library), HE. In Russian, with English subtitles. Followed by Q&A. When Leo Tolstoy died in 1910, Dziga Vertov, an unknown boy from Bialystok, was 14 years old. The elder of Yasnaya Poliana could know neither the name nor the works of the future filmmaker, one of the founders of the art of documentary cinematography. The film, however, follows the two artists’ life paths, their worldviews and biographies in a parallel motion. In his best films (Kino-Eye, Man with a Movie Camera, The Symphony of Donbass and others), Vertov explored Tolstoy’s aesthetic principles and promoted the traditions of classical Russian literature on screen. One of the key episodes of the film is based on Vertov's unique footage of the Moscow Agricultural Exhibition of 1923, a story that reveals the common trajectories of the great Russian writer’s and the filmmaker’s creative aspirations. The narration of the film takes the perspective of Alexander Lemberg, an old cameraman and friend of Vertov's, whose image cannot leave the audience indifferent. 

Galina Evtushenko, born in Voronezh, holds a graduate degree in Art History from the Russian Institute of Cinematography (VGIK). After studying film making and script writing with Leonid Gurevich and Samarii Zelikin, she worked for the Russian Studio of Documentary Films before joining Roza Film Studio. She is an award-winning scriptwriter, film director and producer, a recipient of the prestigious Russian film prizes “Nika” and “Zolotoi Orel,” as well as the laureate of the City of Moscow for Literature and Film (2007). She teaches at the Russian University for the Humanities in Moscow. In the Spring semester of 2018, she is a Fulbright Scholar in the Documentary Studies Program of the Department of History, at SUNY Albany.
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MOVING LYRICS - 2018: INTERNATIONAL STUDENT FESTIVAL OF SHORT FILMS. May 7, 5-7 pm, Hemmerdinger Screening Center, Room 706 (Library), HE. The annual festival Moving Lyrics features creative visualizations of Russian and Anglo-American poetry, respectively, on the streets of New York and in Moscow, on the other side of the pond. In 2017, our participants came from Hunter College, Columbia University, Barnard College, New York University and Moscow State University, where the festival runs under the title "Poet s kinoapparatom: stikhi i stikhiia goroda." The project is curated by a team of professional filmmakers and faculty: Olga and Basil Lvoff, Viktor Ilyukhin and Ruslan Poddubtsev. The festival is possible through the generous support of the Office of the President of Hunter College and the Harriman Institute of Columbia University.
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ELENA KOSTYUCHENKO. "RUSSIA'S INVISIBLE COMMUNITIES IN INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM." May 15, 5-7 pm, B126 HW. Elena Kostyuchenko is a journalist, author, and activist who reports on marginalized communities, human rights, and conflicts in Russia. She was among the first ones to write about the actions of “Pussy Riot” and the presence of Russian troops in Eastern Ukraine. A campaigner for LGBT rights and an investigative journalist for the liberal newspaper Novaya Gazeta, she is also the author of two books of prose, Unwanted on Probation (2014) and It’s Us Who Will Live Here (2015). She is a recipient of the European Press Prize, the Gerd Bucerius Press Prize for Russia and Eastern Europe, and the Paul Klebnikov Award.
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Hunter College, CUNY
Division of Russian and Slavic Studies
Dpt. of Classical and Oriental Studies
695 Park Avenue, Suite 1425 HW
New York, NY 10065
Email: russhunter@hunter.cuny.edu