Turning Back the Waves Press Kit
-
Upload
gregory-gan -
Category
Documents
-
view
220 -
download
0
description
Transcript of Turning Back the Waves Press Kit
TURNING BACK THE WAVESGregory Gan
96 minutes/2009/color/Russian with English subtitles/Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Susanna Solomonovna Pechuro …as Herself
Malva Noevna Landa …as Herself
Irina Pavlovna Gavrilova …as Herself
Svetlana Pavlovna Gavrilova …as Herself
Tatiana Pavlovna Gavrilova …as Herself
Elena Vasilievna Yecheistova …as Herself
Anna Mihaylovna Lavrova …as Herself
Vladimir Alier …as Himself - bard singer
Tatiana Mihaylovna Bahmina …as Herself - dissident archivist
Gregory Gan Director, Writer, Producer
Cinematographer
Editor
Translation and subtitles from Russian
Rouzbeh Heydari Editor
Dr. Sharon Roseman Academic Supervision
Running time: 96 minutes
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
In Russian with English subtitles
Foreign Title: Повернуть Волны в Спядь
Date of completion (production): August 2008
Date of expected completion (post-production): December 2009
Shooting Format: Digital Video
Preview Format: DVD (All Regions)
Exhibition Format: DigiBeta, DVD (All Regions)
FILMMAKERS
CAST
Department of AnthropologyMemorial University of NewfoundlandSt. John's, NL, Canada, A1C 5S7T: (709) 737-8870e-mail: [email protected]
Designed by Vanessa Stockley, granitestudios.ca
Susanna Solomonovna Pechuro was born to Jewish parents in
Moscow in 1933. When Susanna was nine years old, the Great
Patriotic War began. She was evacuated to the Ural region,
and worked as a nurse for wounded Red Army soldiers. While
in school, she formed an underground political organization to
uphold the ideals of the Russian Revolution. Her involvement in
this organization was a pivotal moment that sharply redefined the
contours of her life.
Malva Noevna Landa was born in Odessa in 1918. When she was
seven years old, the family moved to Saratov. Malva Noevna asserts
she started hating the Soviet regime when she saw the consequences
of collectivization in 1930. Her father was arrested in 1932,
released a year later, and arrested and executed in 1937, during
the time of Stalin’s “Great Purges.” Malva Noevna became
a geologist for “the romance of it all,” and after a long career,
joined the ranks of dissident intellectuals in the mid 1960s. In her
early nineties, she retains her strong political position, remaining
politically active.
PRINCIPAL CAST BIOGRAPHIES
Irina Pavlovna Gavrilova was born in Moscow in 1928. During the
Second World War, she was evacuated with her sister Svetlana to
the Gorki region. Her father passed away during the war. After
she returned from evacuation, she enrolled in the Moscow State
University, in the faculty of geography. She began teaching at the
university in 1949 and continued teaching until May 2008.
Svetlana Pavlovna Gavrilova was born in Chernigov, Ukraine in
1933. During the War, she was evacuated with her older sister,
Irina. Finishing school, Svetlana enrolled in university as a geology
student. Her yearly field expeditions took her to the Ural region,
Western Siberia, Armenia and Mongolia. She has fond memories
of riding horses, climbing mountains, and interacting with locals in
Asia and the former Soviet Union. Today, she continues teaching
geology.
Tatiana Pavlovna Gavrilova was born in 1939 in Moscow. She
considers herself a child of the “Thaw” generation—those who
came to maturity during Nikita Khrushchev’s liberal era in the
late 1950s and early 1960s. She became a psychology professor
specializing in child and family psychology.
Elena Vasilievna Yecheistova was born in 1926 in Moscow. She
survived the Second World War with her mother in Moscow, after
her dad passed away in 1943. She enrolled to study architecture,
and dedicated much of her life to building an architectural
complex in the first-ever downhill ski resort in the Soviet Union.
She is now retired, tending after 5 great-grandchildren.
Anna Mihaylovna Lavrova was born in Irkutsk, Western Siberia
in 1936. She can trace her family history to the 16th century
Polish ancestry. Her grandfather was a Moscow intellectual
who began to publish writers such as Dostoevsky and Chekhov.
After a career as a lake biologist on Lake Baikal in Siberia, Anna
moved to Moscow in 1953, and pursued writing. Her Moscow
acquaintances included Lord Valkonsky and the leader of the
Russian cubofuturist movement, Aleksei Kruchenih. She continues
working, writing about her Siberian past.
Through filmed interviews, seven Moscow women belonging to the creative,
professional or dissident intelligentsia remember certain periods of their lives in
correlation with major events in the history of the Soviet Union and the Russian
Federation. The participants retrace their history prior to the Russian Revolution of
1917, and detail their childhoods in the Bolshevik state. They evoke images of their
youth during collectivization, industrialization and the Second World War; remember
their emerging professional lives during ‘The Thaw,’ and their family lives during Leonid
Brezhnev’s era of stagnation. The film’s narrative culminates during the period of the
Perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet Union as a conflictual moment in the lives of
many members of the intelligentsia. As an exploration of the boundaries of ethnographic
filmmaking, this film uses visual metaphors as a method to instigate interpretations of
the narrative material and create a dialogue among the filmmaker, the participants and
a wider audience. The visual thesis highlights oftentimes conflictual narratives in order
to reinforce the relevance of the critical participation of the women of the intelligentsia
in present-day Russia.
SYNOPSIS
“Responsible filmmaking”
The director returned to Russia in the summer of 2009 with an edited version of the
film “Turning Back the Waves.” He gathered all the participants, and screened the film
while recording their responses. The result, known as “elicitation,” a research method
in visual anthropology, was a vigorous dialogue about the position of the intelligentsia
in present-day Russia, as well as a chance for participants to view how the filmmaker/
anthropologist chose to represent them. This elicitation material will be included in a
DVD bonus section, when the film receives distribution.
PRODUCTION NOTES
Gregory Gan is an ethnographic filmmaker and a
graduate student in Social Cultural Anthropology
at the Memorial University of Newfoundland.
He is currently finishing a Master’s Thesis on the
topic of “Women of the Russian Intelligentsia.”
He has a Hon. B.A. in anthropology from the
University of Toronto, and took film courses at
Ryerson University. His previous work includes
three short films, “Negative Space,” “Longpoint,”
and “Session Talks;” a mid-length ethnographic
film “Make a Wise Wish Now,” and a feature-
length documentary “In Search of Rumi,” in
post-production. He has traveled extensively
to pursue his interest in anthropology and
ethnographic film.
This feature-length ethnographic film was based on vigorous anthropological
research aimed at the completion of a Master’s Thesis at the Memorial University of
Newfoundland. My research interests in anthropology include identity politics, modern
state ideology and gender in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia.
This research project focused on the position of the women of the Russian intelligentsia
in present-day Russia in light of the transition to post-Soviet society. The film is not
void of autobiographical interest, since I was born and raised in Russia, but have lived
in Canada for the last 15 years. Thus, my ethnographic filmmaking is characterized by
a personal and reflexive approach, which allows me to aim to make ethnographically
sensitive films.
DIRECTOR
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT