The Women's Dialog: International Women's Journal
The Duke University Center for International Studies is pleased to announce the premiere of Modern Russian Feminism: Twenty Years Forward, a documentary produced with the support and assistance of DUCIS, at 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 20, at the Center for Documentary Studies auditorium, 1317 W. Pettigrew St.
Modern Russian Feminism: Twenty Years Forward tells many stories of how Russians and Americans collaborated over the last two decades in reviving women’s activism and creating Russian women’s studies on both sides of the ocean – in the Soviet Union and post-soviet Russia and the United States. Written and produced by Beth Holmgren (Duke University) and directed, filmed, and edited by Igor Sopronenko (Signature Media Productions LLC), this film is based on interviews with eighteen experts from Russia and the United States, all of whom participated directly in this nationwide feminist project. Its subjects include activists Nadezhda Azhgikhina (Association of Russian Women Journalists), Olga Lipovskaia (St. Petersburg Center for Gender Issues), and Anastasia Posadskaia-Vanderbeck (Moscow Center for Gender Studies); journalist Colette Shulman; and scholars Barbara Engel, Helena Goscilo, Julie Hemment, Irina Iukina, Janet E. Johnson, Marina Ledkovsky, Marianna Muravyeva, Sergei Oushakine, http://www.amazon.ca/Women-Russian-History-Natalia-Pushkareva/dp/0750920939, Rochelle Ruthchild, Olga Shnyrova, Valerie Sperling, Elena Zdravomyslova, and Mary Zirin.
A womens' self-defense class.
This film assesses the last twenty years of Russian feminism and the establishment of Russian women’s studies on either side of the Atlantic, from the time glasnost’ made possible frank discussion of Soviet women’s real hardships up to the present day. Although late twentieth-century Russian feminism and women’s studies in Russia developed with the encouragement and aid of different groups of European and American scholars and activists, we concentrated on the interaction between Russians and Americans over two generations – those Russian founding figures and their American collaborators who began working together in the late 1980s, and younger Russian and American scholars continuing and collaborating on primarily scholarly work, albeit with a somewhat different sense of the dynamics of the exchange as Americans now seek more direction from and cede primary authority to their Russian colleagues.
Nadezhda Azhgikhina, Olga Lipovskaia and Liudmila Zavadskaia in New York City in 2000.
The Russian and American scholars and activists in Modern Russian Feminism recall how they variously got involved in feminist activism and/or research on Russian women and created the organizational and print resources (meeting and networking places, newsletters or informational magazines and articles) needed for mutual support, outreach, and further study. They describe what sort of activism Russian women attempted in the 1990s, under conditions of extreme economic duress, and debate the efficacy of the Western funding that often was critical to making this activism possible. The final section of the film focuses on the current situation – the relationship between Russian feminist professors and students who resist that identification; the haphazard state of scholarly exchange between Russian and American specialists; and the stiff challenges Russian feminists face in the Putin-Medvedev era. Part of the film’s interest lies in the diversity of our subjects’ views and experiences and the compelling way they tell their stories. Modern Russian Feminism is not a “feel good” film about modern Russian feminism, but an attempt by many of those involved to analyze what happened, what succeeded, what failed, and what might still be done.
“People have preconceptions of what Russian womanhood is all about,” Holmgren says. “This film will open their eyes. It shows many hardworking people coming together to achieve positive results for women in Russia – from recognizing women’s participation in Russian history and politics to ridding them of the double burden of lesser paid professional labor and unpaid domestic labor. Russian women today still need our understanding and support.”
In addition to assistance from the Duke University Center for International Studies, Modern Russian Feminism was made possible in part by the Association for Women in Slavic Studies, Duke’s Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, a Collaboration Development Grant from Duke’s Council for the Arts, Office of the Provost and the Duke University Arts and Sciences Committee on Faculty Research, with additional funding from the U.S. Department of Education, the Duke University Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies, the Josiah Charles Trent Memorial Foundation, and Mary and Harold Zirin.
Professor Holmgren and Igor Sopronenko, the film’s director, will participate in a question-and-answer session following the premiere, which is free and open to the public.
art, culture, Department of Education, Documentary Studies, Europe, foreign language, globalization, human rights, international studies, Russia, womens studies
