The New Land Film Festival
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Documentaries depicting the era of the Russian cultural migration and the people who defined it.
Presented in collaboration with Russian American Foundation Admission: $15/night
June 6, 2016 | Night One
June 7, 2016 | Night Two |
June 6 – The New Land Film Festival Night One
6:00pm
"Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: The Art of the Departure" by David Grubin (23 minutes)
A short Q&A with David Grubin and Emilia Kabakov will follow the screening.
Ilya Kabakov, the internationally acclaimed artist, came of age as an artist in the Soviet Union during the repressive days before Perestroika when avant-garde artists were forbidden to exhibit their work publicly. He managed to immigrate to America in search of creative freedom, where he married and began collaborating with Emilia Lekach, another fugitive from Soviet Russia. Together Ilya and Emilia Kabakov went on to make their mark, exhibiting around the world, creating work filled with poetic longing and a biting satirical critique of the society they had left behind and the government that had refused to allow him to exhibit. Finally in 2004, as winds of change blew through Russia, they were invited back to show their work at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg - the first living artists ever to be so honored. Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: The Art of Departure tells the story of their first trip back to Russia since they fled, filled with the tension and setbacks of installing their monumental exhibition at the Hermitage, and paints a vivid picture of their early days under the soul-crushing Soviet regime.
6:40pm
“Brodsky. The Landscape with the flood" by Sergey Kokovkin (40 minutes)
At the end of January 1996, the author receives a letter from Brodsky, only to learn that he has passed away the very same day. The author then rushes to New York to attend the funeral. Several years later, he finds himself in the Big Apple again looking for traces the famous Nobel Prize winner's life. During an accidental meeting with Vagrich Bkhchanyan on the street, it is revealed to the author that Brodsky is indeed here in the city. Attempts to ambush Brodsky by his house lead to nothing. Meanwhile, a huge storm is gathering above the city. Heavy rain causes a flood, and Brodsky’s archive, kept in the suburbs, is swept away into the ocean. But how did this same collection become trapped in the ice of the Neva River?
7:30pm
"Stateless" by Michael Drob (86 minutes)
A short Q&A with Michael Drob will follow the screening.
In the late 1980s Soviet Jews were once again given permission to leave the USSR. Unlike their ‘refusenik’ predecessors, those coming to the US were now burdened with having to prove “reasonable fear of persecution,” a concept simply not understood by those born into maltreatment. Because of this, thousands had their applications for refugee status denied, leaving them in Italy – Stateless. This is the first documentary film that guides us through this experience as recalled by the emigres themselves and with political context by representatives of HIAS, NYANA, AJC and others.
June 7 – The New Land Film Festival Night Two
6:00pm
"It's a fine kettle of Fish" by Edward Staroselsky 50'
A kinograph picture about Mikhail Fishgoyt, who was a war hero, GULAG prisoner, and a film director in Gorky film studio in Moscow.
7:30pm
"Boba - Sapper of Big Dramatic Theater" by Edward Staroselsky 50’
A kinograph picture about a Soviet actor, who was a sapper during the second world war and who became a Hollywood actor after he immigrated to the US.
8:30pm
Short Q&A with Edward Staroselsky
About the Speakers
David Grubin is a director, writer, producer, and cinematographer who has produced over 100 films, ranging across history, art, poetry, and science, winning every award in the field of documentary television, including two Alfred I. Dupont awards, three George Foster Peabody prizes, five Writer's Guild prizes, and ten Emmys. His biographies for the PBS series American Experience -Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided; LBJ; Truman;TR: The Story of Theodore Roosevelt; and FDR - have set the standard for television biography. His five-part series for PBS - Healing And The Mind with Bill Moyers - has won many awards, and the companion book, for which he was executive editor, rose to number one on The New York Times Best Sellers list, remaining on the list for 32 weeks. Grubin has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, has been a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College, and is the recipient of an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, Hamilton College. A former chairman of the board of directors of The Film Forum, he is a member of the Society of American Historians, and sits on the board at Poets House. Grubin has taught documentary film producing in Columbia University's Graduate Film Program, and has lectured on filmmaking across the country. His most recent films for PBS aired in 2015: Language Matters with Bob Holman, a film about languages in danger of extinction, and two films about health care in the United States - Rx: The Quiet Revolution, and Doctors of Tomorrow. Currently, he is producing a film about Nikola Tesla for PBS’s American Experience.
Edward Staroselsky (born 1948, Leningrand, now St. Petersburg). Graduated Russian State Institute of Performing Arts. Director of documentary films: «Post Cards from Hell», «Shining in the dark», «These are the pies», «Boba – The Sapper of Bolshoi Drama», feature films «Prime Time», «My Famely Treаgure», «Life Experians». Stage productions: «The Naked King» (by Schwartz), «Fantasy of Pushkin», «Jan of Ark» (by Shaw), «Gogol in the Subway», «The Inspector General». Has lived in the US since 1979.