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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20251204T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20251204T213000
DTSTAMP:20260728T064909
CREATED:20251008T194902Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251009T144535Z
UID:10000226-1764874800-1764883800@ecs.princeton.edu
SUMMARY:Imagine Otherwise: Fantasy\, Fairytale\, Fiction (Slavic Film Series) - Mermaid
DESCRIPTION:Mermaid (dir. Anna Melikyan\, 2007\, 115 min) \nLoosely based on The Little Mermaid\, this film tells the story of Alisa\, a young girl who has discovered that she has a magical power to grant any wish she desires. After wishing to move to Moscow\, her seaside home burns down\, forcing her mother to obey Alisa’s desires. In the city\, she falls in love with Sasha\, a conman who sells people property on the Moon\, Venus\, and Mars. The couple embark on a fairytale-like three-day adventure\, with Sasha repeating his erratic behavior every day\, introducing Alisa to the chaotic monotony of capitalist Russia. \nMermaid represents an attempt to interpretively stabilize an uninterpretable post-Soviet Russia. However\, this is not a fairytale with a happy ending. If the earlier films in this series aim include a utopian desire for reimagination and reinvention\, it is difficult to find such positive readings in Melikyan’s lively\, exciting\, but nonetheless incredibly dark vision of capitalism heading toward disaster. \n__________________________________________ \nThe Soviet project was characterized by a utopian drive that stretched far beyond the material means at their disposal. Such a desire\, uninhibited by ontological strictures\, finds some of its clearest manifestations in film\, a medium that Siegfried Kracauer once called “the daydream of society.” Consequently\, this film series explores the way in which the social imaginary developed in Soviet (and Post-Soviet) cinema\, particularly through the lens of fantasy\, fairytale and science fiction. The aim of the series\, however\, is not to expose the incommensurable distance between a fallacious imagination and empirical reality\, but rather to focus on the discourses of the possible – and not the factual – which have made cinema a privileged site for imagining how our world could be radically otherwise. \nThe series has been organized into four sub-series which allow us to explore different facets of this social imaginary. The first three films in the series (Aelita\, Moscow-Cassiopeia\, and First on the Moon) probe the Soviet Union’s cosmic imagination. Long before the Soviet Space Program\, Nikolai Fyodorov’s biocosmism had captured the imagination of many radical thinkers. Aelita\, one of the first full-length films depicting space travel\, gave concrete imagery to these thinkers’ theories with Isaac Rabinovich and Victor Simov’s constructivist set designs of Martian society. The following films in this sub-series show the diachronic development of the sci-fi aesthetic\, through the years following the Space Race (Moscow-Cassiopeia) and into the retrofitting historicization of the post-soviet perspective (First on the Moon). \nThe second sub-series (Amphibian Man and Professor Dowell’s Testament) focuses on the concept of the New Human in the new Soviet society. These films construct a laboratory – inhabited by animal-human hybrids and reanimated human heads – to think past the human and explore the potential consequences of such a posthumanist leap. \nThe third sub-series (New Gulliver\, Alice in Wonderland\, and Tale of Tales) centers on animation as another method of thinking beyond the real. This sub-series also articulates temporal and geo-spatial adaptations as two distinct ways of creating the new – while New Gulliver and Alice in Wonderland both represent the Soviet Union’s attempt to translate Western tales to Soviet contexts\, Tale of Tales is an attempt to treat the Soviet past as material for fairytale narrativization. \nLand of Oz and Mermaid\, the films which constitute the last sub-series\, similarly narrativize the real world through the epistemological framework of the fairytale. Here\, however\, the ideological explanatory functions of the Soviet Union have already faded away\, and one must cling to the fairytale not to tell stories about the past\, but to interpret the chaos of the present post-Soviet space. Events: \nOctober 9th\nAmphibian Man (dir. Vladimir Chebotaryov\,1962\, 82 min) \nOctober 23rd\nProfessor Dowell’s Testament (dir. Leonid Menaker\, 1984\, 91 min) \nOctober 30th\nNew Gulliver (dir. Aleksandr Ptushko\, 1935\, 75 min) \nNovember 6th\nAlice in Wonderland (dir. Efrem Pruzhanskiy\, 1981\, 31 min) & Tale of Tales (dir. Yuri Norstein\, 1979\, 29 min) \nNovember 13th\nLand of Oz (dir. Vasily Sigarev\, 2015\, 100 min) \nDecember 4th\nMermaid (dir. Anna Melikyan\, 2007\, 115 min)
URL:https://ecs.princeton.edu/event/imagine-otherwise-fantasy-fairytale-fiction-slavic-film-series-mermaid-2/
LOCATION:301 Julis Romo Rabinowitz
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://ecs.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2025/10/mermaid.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20251113T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20251113T213000
DTSTAMP:20260728T064909
CREATED:20251008T194644Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251008T194644Z
UID:10000225-1763060400-1763069400@ecs.princeton.edu
SUMMARY:Imagine Otherwise: Fantasy\, Fairytale\, Fiction (Slavic Film Series) - Land of Oz
DESCRIPTION:Land of Oz (dir. Vasily Sigarev\, 2015\, 100 min) \nOn December 31st\, Lena searches for Torforezy Street somewhere deep in Ekaterinburg\, where she has just gotten a job as a cashier at a kiosk. However\, her journey is repeatedly waylaid\, first by a car accident\, and then by several men who loosely resemble the Tinman\, the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. With an extremely innovative approach to language\, Sigarev shows that what has flooded the post-ideological space of 2000s Russia is the obscenity – Russian mat. Obscene language provides a unifying framework through which the post-Soviet subjects can understand one another and is much more effective than any fairy-tale ideology at providing a common language. Following in the footsteps of Gogol\, Saltykov-Shchedrin\, and Chekov\, Vasilii Sigarev stakes a claim as the ultimate satirist of the post-Soviet space. \n_______________________ \nThe Soviet project was characterized by a utopian drive that stretched far beyond the material means at their disposal. Such a desire\, uninhibited by ontological strictures\, finds some of its clearest manifestations in film\, a medium that Siegfried Kracauer once called “the daydream of society.” Consequently\, this film series explores the way in which the social imaginary developed in Soviet (and Post-Soviet) cinema\, particularly through the lens of fantasy\, fairytale and science fiction. The aim of the series\, however\, is not to expose the incommensurable distance between a fallacious imagination and empirical reality\, but rather to focus on the discourses of the possible – and not the factual – which have made cinema a privileged site for imagining how our world could be radically otherwise. \nThe series has been organized into four sub-series which allow us to explore different facets of this social imaginary. The first three films in the series (Aelita\, Moscow-Cassiopeia\, and First on the Moon) probe the Soviet Union’s cosmic imagination. Long before the Soviet Space Program\, Nikolai Fyodorov’s biocosmism had captured the imagination of many radical thinkers. Aelita\, one of the first full-length films depicting space travel\, gave concrete imagery to these thinkers’ theories with Isaac Rabinovich and Victor Simov’s constructivist set designs of Martian society. The following films in this sub-series show the diachronic development of the sci-fi aesthetic\, through the years following the Space Race (Moscow-Cassiopeia) and into the retrofitting historicization of the post-soviet perspective (First on the Moon). \nThe second sub-series (Amphibian Man and Professor Dowell’s Testament) focuses on the concept of the New Human in the new Soviet society. These films construct a laboratory – inhabited by animal-human hybrids and reanimated human heads – to think past the human and explore the potential consequences of such a posthumanist leap. \nThe third sub-series (New Gulliver\, Alice in Wonderland\, and Tale of Tales) centers on animation as another method of thinking beyond the real. This sub-series also articulates temporal and geo-spatial adaptations as two distinct ways of creating the new – while New Gulliver and Alice in Wonderland both represent the Soviet Union’s attempt to translate Western tales to Soviet contexts\, Tale of Tales is an attempt to treat the Soviet past as material for fairytale narrativization. \nLand of Oz and Mermaid\, the films which constitute the last sub-series\, similarly narrativize the real world through the epistemological framework of the fairytale. Here\, however\, the ideological explanatory functions of the Soviet Union have already faded away\, and one must cling to the fairytale not to tell stories about the past\, but to interpret the chaos of the present post-Soviet space. Events: \nOctober 9th\nAmphibian Man (dir. Vladimir Chebotaryov\,1962\, 82 min) \nOctober 23rd\nProfessor Dowell’s Testament (dir. Leonid Menaker\, 1984\, 91 min) \nOctober 30th\nNew Gulliver (dir. Aleksandr Ptushko\, 1935\, 75 min) \nNovember 6th\nAlice in Wonderland (dir. Efrem Pruzhanskiy\, 1981\, 31 min) & Tale of Tales (dir. Yuri Norstein\, 1979\, 29 min) \nNovember 13th\nLand of Oz (dir. Vasily Sigarev\, 2015\, 100 min) \nDecember 4th\nMermaid (dir. Anna Melikyan\, 2007\, 115 min)
URL:https://ecs.princeton.edu/event/imagine-otherwise-fantasy-fairytale-fiction-slavic-film-series-land-of-oz/
LOCATION:301 Julis Romo Rabinowitz
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://ecs.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2025/10/color.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20251106T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20251106T213000
DTSTAMP:20260728T064909
CREATED:20251008T194425Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251008T195531Z
UID:10000224-1762455600-1762464600@ecs.princeton.edu
SUMMARY:Imagine Otherwise: Fantasy\, Fairytale\, Fiction (Slavic Film Series) – Alice in Wonderland & Tale of Tales
DESCRIPTION:Alice in Wonderland (dir. Efrem Pruzhanskiy\, 1981\, 31 min) & \nTale of Tales (dir. Yuri Norstein\, 1979\, 29 min) \nThese two short films both reflect the distinct and experimental animation practices at work in the late Soviet Union. Alice and Wonderland was produced by the Ukrainian animation and film studio Kyivnaukfilm\, well known for its surreal and experimental approach to animation. While the character designs were influenced by Sir John Tenniel’s original illustrations\, the animation adds its own Soviet twist. Tale of Tales\, on the other hand\, takes the Soviet past itself as the material for self-mythologization\, with a script from Lyudmila Petrushevskaia narrativizing Soviet history through the framework of the fairytale. \n_________________________________ \nThe Soviet project was characterized by a utopian drive that stretched far beyond the material means at their disposal. Such a desire\, uninhibited by ontological strictures\, finds some of its clearest manifestations in film\, a medium that Siegfried Kracauer once called “the daydream of society.” Consequently\, this film series explores the way in which the social imaginary developed in Soviet (and Post-Soviet) cinema\, particularly through the lens of fantasy\, fairytale and science fiction. The aim of the series\, however\, is not to expose the incommensurable distance between a fallacious imagination and empirical reality\, but rather to focus on the discourses of the possible – and not the factual – which have made cinema a privileged site for imagining how our world could be radically otherwise. \nThe series has been organized into four sub-series which allow us to explore different facets of this social imaginary. The first three films in the series (Aelita\, Moscow-Cassiopeia\, and First on the Moon) probe the Soviet Union’s cosmic imagination. Long before the Soviet Space Program\, Nikolai Fyodorov’s biocosmism had captured the imagination of many radical thinkers. Aelita\, one of the first full-length films depicting space travel\, gave concrete imagery to these thinkers’ theories with Isaac Rabinovich and Victor Simov’s constructivist set designs of Martian society. The following films in this sub-series show the diachronic development of the sci-fi aesthetic\, through the years following the Space Race (Moscow-Cassiopeia) and into the retrofitting historicization of the post-soviet perspective (First on the Moon). \nThe second sub-series (Amphibian Man and Professor Dowell’s Testament) focuses on the concept of the New Human in the new Soviet society. These films construct a laboratory – inhabited by animal-human hybrids and reanimated human heads – to think past the human and explore the potential consequences of such a posthumanist leap. \nThe third sub-series (New Gulliver\, Alice in Wonderland\, and Tale of Tales) centers on animation as another method of thinking beyond the real. This sub-series also articulates temporal and geo-spatial adaptations as two distinct ways of creating the new – while New Gulliver and Alice in Wonderland both represent the Soviet Union’s attempt to translate Western tales to Soviet contexts\, Tale of Tales is an attempt to treat the Soviet past as material for fairytale narrativization. \nLand of Oz and Mermaid\, the films which constitute the last sub-series\, similarly narrativize the real world through the epistemological framework of the fairytale. Here\, however\, the ideological explanatory functions of the Soviet Union have already faded away\, and one must cling to the fairytale not to tell stories about the past\, but to interpret the chaos of the present post-Soviet space. Events: \nOctober 9th\nAmphibian Man (dir. Vladimir Chebotaryov\,1962\, 82 min) \nOctober 23rd\nProfessor Dowell’s Testament (dir. Leonid Menaker\, 1984\, 91 min) \nOctober 30th\nNew Gulliver (dir. Aleksandr Ptushko\, 1935\, 75 min) \nNovember 6th\nAlice in Wonderland (dir. Efrem Pruzhanskiy\, 1981\, 31 min) & Tale of Tales (dir. Yuri Norstein\, 1979\, 29 min) \nNovember 13th\nLand of Oz (dir. Vasily Sigarev\, 2015\, 100 min) \nDecember 4th\nMermaid (dir. Anna Melikyan\, 2007\, 115 min) \n 
URL:https://ecs.princeton.edu/event/slavic-fall-film-series-imagine-otherwise-fantasy-fairytale-fiction-alice-in-wonderland-tale-of-tales/
LOCATION:301 Julis Romo Rabinowitz
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://ecs.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2025/10/alice.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20251030T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20251030T213000
DTSTAMP:20260728T064909
CREATED:20251008T194223Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251008T194223Z
UID:10000223-1761850800-1761859800@ecs.princeton.edu
SUMMARY:Imagine Otherwise: Fantasy\, Fairytale\, Fiction (Slavic Film Series) - New Gulliver
DESCRIPTION:New Gulliver (dir. Aleksandr Ptushko\, 1935\, 75 min) \nOne of the first feature films to extensively utilize stop-motion puppet animation\, New Gulliver is a Communist re-telling of Jonathan Swift. Petya\, a pioneer from Artek\, falls asleep while reading Gulliver’s Travels and finds himself in a dreamscape where Swift’s Lilliputia has been rendered as a capitalist-military state. Petya becomes involved in a worker’s strike\, where his notebook from the Soviet Union informs the laborers of Lilliputia of the international solidarity of the proletariat. \nThe film\, which was highly admired by Charlie Chaplin and additionally the founders of Czech animation\, represents a highly productive Soviet translation of the Western fantasy genre. What is aimed for in the translation is not a one-to-one mapping between different cultural contexts\, but a poetic inscription of difference at the moment of transposition. \n_________________________________ \nThe Soviet project was characterized by a utopian drive that stretched far beyond the material means at their disposal. Such a desire\, uninhibited by ontological strictures\, finds some of its clearest manifestations in film\, a medium that Siegfried Kracauer once called “the daydream of society.” Consequently\, this film series explores the way in which the social imaginary developed in Soviet (and Post-Soviet) cinema\, particularly through the lens of fantasy\, fairytale and science fiction. The aim of the series\, however\, is not to expose the incommensurable distance between a fallacious imagination and empirical reality\, but rather to focus on the discourses of the possible – and not the factual – which have made cinema a privileged site for imagining how our world could be radically otherwise. \nThe series has been organized into four sub-series which allow us to explore different facets of this social imaginary. The first three films in the series (Aelita\, Moscow-Cassiopeia\, and First on the Moon) probe the Soviet Union’s cosmic imagination. Long before the Soviet Space Program\, Nikolai Fyodorov’s biocosmism had captured the imagination of many radical thinkers. Aelita\, one of the first full-length films depicting space travel\, gave concrete imagery to these thinkers’ theories with Isaac Rabinovich and Victor Simov’s constructivist set designs of Martian society. The following films in this sub-series show the diachronic development of the sci-fi aesthetic\, through the years following the Space Race (Moscow-Cassiopeia) and into the retrofitting historicization of the post-soviet perspective (First on the Moon). \nThe second sub-series (Amphibian Man and Professor Dowell’s Testament) focuses on the concept of the New Human in the new Soviet society. These films construct a laboratory – inhabited by animal-human hybrids and reanimated human heads – to think past the human and explore the potential consequences of such a posthumanist leap. \nThe third sub-series (New Gulliver\, Alice in Wonderland\, and Tale of Tales) centers on animation as another method of thinking beyond the real. This sub-series also articulates temporal and geo-spatial adaptations as two distinct ways of creating the new – while New Gulliver and Alice in Wonderland both represent the Soviet Union’s attempt to translate Western tales to Soviet contexts\, Tale of Tales is an attempt to treat the Soviet past as material for fairytale narrativization. \nLand of Oz and Mermaid\, the films which constitute the last sub-series\, similarly narrativize the real world through the epistemological framework of the fairytale. Here\, however\, the ideological explanatory functions of the Soviet Union have already faded away\, and one must cling to the fairytale not to tell stories about the past\, but to interpret the chaos of the present post-Soviet space. Events: \nOctober 9th\nAmphibian Man (dir. Vladimir Chebotaryov\,1962\, 82 min) \nOctober 23rd\nProfessor Dowell’s Testament (dir. Leonid Menaker\, 1984\, 91 min) \nOctober 30th\nNew Gulliver (dir. Aleksandr Ptushko\, 1935\, 75 min) \nNovember 6th\nAlice in Wonderland (dir. Efrem Pruzhanskiy\, 1981\, 31 min) & Tale of Tales (dir. Yuri Norstein\, 1979\, 29 min) \nNovember 13th\nLand of Oz (dir. Vasily Sigarev\, 2015\, 100 min) \nDecember 4th\nMermaid (dir. Anna Melikyan\, 2007\, 115 min) \n 
URL:https://ecs.princeton.edu/event/imagine-otherwise-fantasy-fairytale-fiction-slavic-film-series-new-gulliver/
LOCATION:301 Julis Romo Rabinowitz
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://ecs.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2025/10/gulliver.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20251023T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20251023T213000
DTSTAMP:20260728T064909
CREATED:20251008T194004Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251008T195451Z
UID:10000222-1761246000-1761255000@ecs.princeton.edu
SUMMARY:Imagine Otherwise: Fantasy\, Fairytale\, Fiction (Slavic Film Series) – Professor Dowell's Testament
DESCRIPTION:The second Belyaev adaptation of our series\, Professor Dowell’s Testament gives a perestroika-update to a 1925 novel. Professor Dowell\, having created a solution that is capable of reanimating body parts\, asks his assistant Dr. Korn to preserve his head after death. The head remains capable of speech and cognition\, and converses with Korn while an investigation takes place surrounding Dowell’s mysterious death. Professor Dowell’s Testament offers a stark reflection on the scientific experimentation of a Soviet Union coming to its end. \n________________________________________________ \nThe Soviet project was characterized by a utopian drive that stretched far beyond the material means at their disposal. Such a desire\, uninhibited by ontological strictures\, finds some of its clearest manifestations in film\, a medium that Siegfried Kracauer once called “the daydream of society.” Consequently\, this film series explores the way in which the social imaginary developed in Soviet (and Post-Soviet) cinema\, particularly through the lens of fantasy\, fairytale and science fiction. The aim of the series\, however\, is not to expose the incommensurable distance between a fallacious imagination and empirical reality\, but rather to focus on the discourses of the possible – and not the factual – which have made cinema a privileged site for imagining how our world could be radically otherwise. \nThe series has been organized into four sub-series which allow us to explore different facets of this social imaginary. The first three films in the series (Aelita\, Moscow-Cassiopeia\, and First on the Moon) probe the Soviet Union’s cosmic imagination. Long before the Soviet Space Program\, Nikolai Fyodorov’s biocosmism had captured the imagination of many radical thinkers. Aelita\, one of the first full-length films depicting space travel\, gave concrete imagery to these thinkers’ theories with Isaac Rabinovich and Victor Simov’s constructivist set designs of Martian society. The following films in this sub-series show the diachronic development of the sci-fi aesthetic\, through the years following the Space Race (Moscow-Cassiopeia) and into the retrofitting historicization of the post-soviet perspective (First on the Moon). \nThe second sub-series (Amphibian Man and Professor Dowell’s Testament) focuses on the concept of the New Human in the new Soviet society. These films construct a laboratory – inhabited by animal-human hybrids and reanimated human heads – to think past the human and explore the potential consequences of such a posthumanist leap. \nThe third sub-series (New Gulliver\, Alice in Wonderland\, and Tale of Tales) centers on animation as another method of thinking beyond the real. This sub-series also articulates temporal and geo-spatial adaptations as two distinct ways of creating the new – while New Gulliver and Alice in Wonderland both represent the Soviet Union’s attempt to translate Western tales to Soviet contexts\, Tale of Tales is an attempt to treat the Soviet past as material for fairytale narrativization. \nLand of Oz and Mermaid\, the films which constitute the last sub-series\, similarly narrativize the real world through the epistemological framework of the fairytale. Here\, however\, the ideological explanatory functions of the Soviet Union have already faded away\, and one must cling to the fairytale not to tell stories about the past\, but to interpret the chaos of the present post-Soviet space. Events: \nOctober 9th\nAmphibian Man (dir. Vladimir Chebotaryov\,1962\, 82 min) \nOctober 23rd\nProfessor Dowell’s Testament (dir. Leonid Menaker\, 1984\, 91 min) \nOctober 30th\nNew Gulliver (dir. Aleksandr Ptushko\, 1935\, 75 min) \nNovember 6th\nAlice in Wonderland (dir. Efrem Pruzhanskiy\, 1981\, 31 min) & Tale of Tales (dir. Yuri Norstein\, 1979\, 29 min) \nNovember 13th\nLand of Oz (dir. Vasily Sigarev\, 2015\, 100 min) \nDecember 4th\nMermaid (dir. Anna Melikyan\, 2007\, 115 min)
URL:https://ecs.princeton.edu/event/slavic-fall-film-series-imagine-otherwise-fantasy-fairytale-fiction-professor-dowells-testament/
LOCATION:301 Julis Romo Rabinowitz
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://ecs.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2025/10/head.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20251009T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20251009T213000
DTSTAMP:20260728T064909
CREATED:20251008T193306Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251009T143049Z
UID:10000221-1760036400-1760045400@ecs.princeton.edu
SUMMARY:Imagine Otherwise: Fantasy\, Fairytale\, Fiction (Slavic Film Series) - Amphibian Man
DESCRIPTION:Amphibian Man (dir. Vladimir Chebotaryov\,1962\, 82 min) \nPurportedly among Quentin Tarantino’s favorite Russian films\, Amphibian Man tells the story of Ichthyander\, who spends the majority of his time living underwater thanks to the shark gill implants he has received from his doctor-scientist adoptive father. Although he prefers to spend his time under the sea\, he falls in love with a young woman who he saves from a shark attack\, and enters the society of a nearby town\, where the greedy capitalist Zurita plans to exploit Ichthyander’s abilities to harvest pearls from the ocean floor. \nOne of the most popular films of the Soviet Union\, Amphibian Man was originally attacked for “spoiling the high tastes of the Soviet viewership with the genre of the adventure film.” However\, the film has achieved cultural longevity\, with the recent Guillermo del Toro film Shape of Water notably taking influence. Chebotaryov’s film\, taking influence from Alexander Belyaev’s eponymous novel\, attempts to give image to the new Soviet (post)human. \n_________________________________________ \nThe Soviet project was characterized by a utopian drive that stretched far beyond the material means at their disposal. Such a desire\, uninhibited by ontological strictures\, finds some of its clearest manifestations in film\, a medium that Siegfried Kracauer once called “the daydream of society.” Consequently\, this film series explores the way in which the social imaginary developed in Soviet (and Post-Soviet) cinema\, particularly through the lens of fantasy\, fairytale and science fiction. The aim of the series\, however\, is not to expose the incommensurable distance between a fallacious imagination and empirical reality\, but rather to focus on the discourses of the possible – and not the factual – which have made cinema a privileged site for imagining how our world could be radically otherwise. \nThe series has been organized into four sub-series which allow us to explore different facets of this social imaginary. The first three films in the series (Aelita\, Moscow-Cassiopeia\, and First on the Moon) probe the Soviet Union’s cosmic imagination. Long before the Soviet Space Program\, Nikolai Fyodorov’s biocosmism had captured the imagination of many radical thinkers. Aelita\, one of the first full-length films depicting space travel\, gave concrete imagery to these thinkers’ theories with Isaac Rabinovich and Victor Simov’s constructivist set designs of Martian society. The following films in this sub-series show the diachronic development of the sci-fi aesthetic\, through the years following the Space Race (Moscow-Cassiopeia) and into the retrofitting historicization of the post-soviet perspective (First on the Moon). \nThe second sub-series (Amphibian Man and Professor Dowell’s Testament) focuses on the concept of the New Human in the new Soviet society. These films construct a laboratory – inhabited by animal-human hybrids and reanimated human heads – to think past the human and explore the potential consequences of such a posthumanist leap. \nThe third sub-series (New Gulliver\, Alice in Wonderland\, and Tale of Tales) centers on animation as another method of thinking beyond the real. This sub-series also articulates temporal and geo-spatial adaptations as two distinct ways of creating the new – while New Gulliver and Alice in Wonderland both represent the Soviet Union’s attempt to translate Western tales to Soviet contexts\, Tale of Tales is an attempt to treat the Soviet past as material for fairytale narrativization. \nLand of Oz and Mermaid\, the films which constitute the last sub-series\, similarly narrativize the real world through the epistemological framework of the fairytale. Here\, however\, the ideological explanatory functions of the Soviet Union have already faded away\, and one must cling to the fairytale not to tell stories about the past\, but to interpret the chaos of the present post-Soviet space. Events: \nOctober 9th\nAmphibian Man (dir. Vladimir Chebotaryov\,1962\, 82 min) \nOctober 23rd\nProfessor Dowell’s Testament (dir. Leonid Menaker\, 1984\, 91 min) \nOctober 30th\nNew Gulliver (dir. Aleksandr Ptushko\, 1935\, 75 min) \nNovember 6th\nAlice in Wonderland (dir. Efrem Pruzhanskiy\, 1981\, 31 min) & Tale of Tales (dir. Yuri Norstein\, 1979\, 29 min) \nNovember 13th\nLand of Oz (dir. Vasily Sigarev\, 2015\, 100 min) \nDecember 4th\nMermaid (dir. Anna Melikyan\, 2007\, 115 min)
URL:https://ecs.princeton.edu/event/imagine-otherwise-fantasy-fairytale-fiction-slavic-film-series-mermaid/
LOCATION:301 Julis Romo Rabinowitz
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://ecs.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2025/10/ocean_man.jpg
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR