Screening Room
What We're Watching Now:
Heavenly Siberia (Subtitled)
Russian filmmaker Pavel Afonasayev's subtitled documentary depicts Chinese migrants who have come to Siberia to open businesses, practice medicine, or to study for advanced degrees. Despite some Russians' welcome, many locals view these newcomers with a mix of distrust and suspicion. The Chinese do extensive logging and, reportedly, use pesticides that some Russians fear harm the land. Not all of the migrants speak Russian. Can Siberia ever become these Chinese expatriates' true home?
Previous Screenings:
Current Time‘s Prison Alphabet series, directed by Russian filmmaker Andrey Silvestrov, will take you inside the world of Russian prisons for an unprecedented look by 40 former inmates at one of the world’s harshest penal systems. The first episode, on ex-prisoners' recollections of their initial days behind bars, has been subtitled.
Filmmakers:
Andrey Silvestrov is a Russian film director, producer, actor, and artist who works at the nexus of independent cinematography and modern art. He has co-directed with Russian artist Yuri Leiderman (Birmingham Ornament) and director Pavel Labazov (Volga - Volga) He has produced the movies of filmmaker Oleg Mavromatti (No Place Here for Fools, A Monkey, Ostrich, and Grave) and of director Svetlana Baskova (For Marx).
Interview: Not A 'Uniform Evil': How Do Russians Relate To Life In Prison?
We Didn’t Know Each Other Until This Summer revisits the first week of protests and police violence that followed Belarus’ August 9, 2020 presidential election. The film is a chronicle of these events. It is made up entirely of footage shot by the election protests’ participants and witnesses.
Olga Abramchik, a native of Belarus, is a producer for Current Time TV. Abramchik's 2019 documentary The Coach, which tells the story of Belarusian intuitive soccer coach Aleh Kirillou and his team of blind and partially sighted soccer players, won the 2020 award for Best International Film at Kyrgyzstan’s Bir Duino International Human Rights Documentary Festival.
A month before Belarus’ controversial August 9, 2020 presidential elections, Hanna and Paval's taxis in Minsk became, in essence, mobile political salons where the two actively debated the country’s future with their passengers. Belarus: Recalculating Route, a gallery of portraits and opinions by Belarusian filmmaker Maksim Shved, shows us ordinary Belarusians on the eve of the election protests of August 2020.
A graduate of Poland's Wajda Film School, Belarusian filmmaker Maksim Shved creates television documentaries. During the making of Belarus: Recalculating Route, Shved was sentenced to 5 days in jail for supposedly participating in the country's unauthorized 2020 election protests -- a charge he denied.
Generation Gulag is a series of 12 short films made by the media outlet Coda Story, a Current Time content partner, that shows how the memories of gulag survivors relate to the dangers of authoritarianism today.
Katia Patin is a multimedia journalist for the non-profit media outlet Coda Story, based in Tbilisi, Georgia. Patin covers both disinformation and authoritarian uses of technology. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, Haaretz, NBC, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Rappler, and VICE News.
Interview: Gulag Survivors Have 'Important Messages' For Today
In Let It All Burn, Russian filmmaker and TV journalist Andrey Loshak (InterNYET: A History Of The Russian Internet) went behind the scenes in Voronezh, Russia to document the struggle between experimental rock band IC3PEAK and a billiards club with local police and officials over the right to perform.
Andrey Loshak is a Russian TV journalist and filmmaker who considers himself, first and foremost, a reporter. Winner of a TEFI, a prestigious Russian media award, for his television reporting, Loshak has worked for Russia’s national networks NTV and STS. He is the founder of the Takiye Dela (Things Like This) information portal about charitable solutions to social problems.
Interview: Putin Sees Internet As Part Of 'Ideological Warfare'
Flight To Freedom, a film by Current Time Digital video producer Mykola Nemchenko and RFE/RL multimedia coordinator Kateryna Oliynyk, shares the story of Czechoslovak cycling champion Robert Hutyra, who, in 1983, used a hot air balloon he had built to fly his family out from behind the Iron Curtain and into neighboring Austria.
Mykola Nemchenko is a social-media video producer for Current Time Digital. Kateryna Oliynyk is the digital media coordinator for RFE/RL's Multimedia section.
InterNYET: A History Of The Russian Internet (Холивар: История Рунета) is an award-winning, seven-episode series by Russian journalist Andrey Loshak that takes a look at the development of the Russian Internet, or RuNet, and how it has changed over time.
Andrey Loshak is a Russian TV journalist and filmmaker who considers himself, first and foremost, a reporter. Winner of a TEFI, a prestigious Russian media award, for his television reporting, Loshak has worked for Russia’s national networks NTV and STS. He is the founder of the Takiye Dela (Things Like This) information portal about charitable solutions to social problems.
Interview: Putin Sees Internet As Part Of 'Ideological Warfare'
Filmmaker Yekaterina Ponomaryova is a journalist from Yekaterinburg, Russia. For many years, she worked as a correspondent for REN-TV; first in Russia's Urals region, then in St. Petersburg and Ukraine. After leaving REN-TV in 2014, she covered the Urals and Siberia for Current Time.
Interview: Showing Russian Transgenders 'Not Like Freaks:' The Making Of Form #087
Filmmaker Harutyun Mansuryan was born and raised in Yerevan, Armenia. He previously worked for Internews Armenia (now Media Initiatives Center) as a production manager. He is the author and producer of more than 50 investigative reports and documentaries.
He now works as a multimedia video producer for RFE/RL in Prague.