Sixth Annual Russian Diaspora - Israeli Russian Film Festival

Russian American Cultural Center, in collaboration with the Russian and Slavic Studies Program, Hunter College, CUNY is pleased to announce:

The Sixth Annual Diaspora - Israeli Russian Film Festival

FESTIVAL SCHEDULE

1:00 PM | NY Premiere | Super Women by Yael Kipper Zaretsky and Ronen Zaretsky

Israel 2013 | 79 min | Documentary, Drama

Hebrew and Russian with English subtitles

Super Women tells the story of five cashiers who work the same shift in a supermarket. Most are immigrants from Russia and others are native Israelis. The film follows their relationships, the mutual support and solidarity, dealing with the management and customers, their difficulties making a living and their working conditions, as they try to change their fate. Super Women places the immigrants’ issue and the reality of Tel Aviv’s local-global interface at the heart of contemporary documentary cinema.

Q & A

2:30 PM | Jerusalem Boxing Club by Helen Yanovsky

Israel 2015 | 71 min | Documentary

Hebrew, Arabic and Russian with English subtitles

Founded in a bomb shelter in the Katamon neighborhood of Jerusalem, the Jerusalem Boxing Club brings together hundreds of teens from all around the city. For many of these young people, the desire to excel and to win the national championship is nourished by the tough training andboundless love of Russian-born Gershon Luxemburg, club manager and trainer, who claims that “nobody comes to box without a reason.” Jerusalem Boxing Club follows four teens from different walks of Israeli life as they learn from Gershon, call his club home, and compete together for the national title.

Q&A

HOLOCAUST REMEMBERED

3:45 PM | Mother by Iryna Zhygaliuk

USA 2015 | 13min | Short, Drama

Stars: Yelena Shmulenson, Stella Stark, Zenon Zeleniuch

Set in WWII under the Nazi occupation, Mother recounts a widowed woman's struggle for survival with her two children while remaining hidden within the confines of an old barn.

Q&A with Iryna Zhygaliuk and Yelena Shmulenson

4:15 PM  | NY Premiere | Guardians of Remembrance by Boris Maftsir

Israel 2014 | 107 min | Documentary

Russian and Hebrew with English, Hebrew, and Russian subtitles

In Cooperation with: "NonstopMedia" film production company (Belarus)

The Holocaust of the Jews in the former Soviet Union has remained a mystery even many decades after the war has ended. Due to ideological and political reasons, the Soviet regime did not recognize the unique and tragic nature of the extermination of Jews by the Nazis. It was only after the dismantling of the Soviet Union that efforts towards documentation and commemoration of Holocaust victims in these areas were possible. Following seven years as the head of a project at Yad Vashem to recover the names of Holocaust victims in the Former Soviet Union, Boris Maftsir sets out on a journey never seen before on the screen - a journey to restore the memory of a Holocaust that was all but forgotten.

In the Guardians of Remembrance, the first film of the project “The Holocaust in the Soviet Union,” Boris Maftsir offers a comprehensive and accurate picture of the events of the Holocaust in Belarus. The memory keepers depicted in the film are both Jews and non-Jews along with local individuals who work towards commemoration. The film Guardians of Remembrance was filmed at the actual extermination sites and precisely illustrates the sense of time and place of the tragic events.

Q&A with Olga Gershenson  

OUR COMMUNITY MATTERS

5:20 PM | World Premiere | The Return: Nektalovs Never Give Up | Directed by Ariel Roubinov

USA 2015 | 35 min | HD Documentary, Russian with English subtitles

This film is narrated through a personal story of Mark Nektalov and explores his journey in search of purpose and realization of his inner drive to do good for the people. Mark had a turbulent past. Disconnect with the past, not knowing how to live in the present, and not having a family support, neither that of his community, Mark finds himself in a position of changing the fate of his long-distance relative. As it happens, this relative has played an important role in Mark's childhood back in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. This coincidental encounter changes the course of events for everyone.

Q&A Session with Ariel Roubinov and Rafael Nektalov

6:00 PM | A Special Presentation | Actor, playwright, producer and filmmaker Anna Fishbeyn on Feminism and the Russian-Jewish immigration to America.

Happy Hour Feminism, written, starred and produced by Anna Fishbeyn, is a comedy web series about a futuristic talk show where men experience all the media pressures placed on women today. The web series has been selected at over 11 film festivals, and won for Best Web Series, Best Leading Actress, Best Women Filmmakers, and Best Screenplay. In the Episode entitled, LIPO-DRAINING BEER, Anna talks with Dr. Lara Crownhead, a scientist and inventor of Lipo-Draining Beer, a miracle product that makes men skinny in three days. 

The festival will be concluded with Anna Fishbeyn's live performance of My Stubborn Tongue, her one-woman show about coming to America during the Cold War and her family's hilarious attempts to fit into American society.

Event tickets are available via EventBrite (click here)

Tickets for a single film or the whole program: $15 | Hunter College students: $5

Please note: photo ID is required for entry into the college. Please allow additional time for check.

Entrance on East 69th Street. Lang Hall is on the 4th Floor of the North Building, Room 424.

If you go through the Visitors Center - it is located on the South West corner of East 68th St. & Lexington Ave. Below is a map of Hunter College, the West Building is orange and the North Building is teal/blue:  http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/abouthunter/maps/68th-street-main-campus

RACC's events are made possible in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council

WE THANK OUR MEDIA SPONSORS:

Russia Beyond the Headlines, NY Times Weekend, Russian Art and Culture, The Bukharian Times, The Cultural Highlights _ Israeli Culture,

TASS, NTV, RTN, RTVI

.

http://tass.ru/kultura/2720521

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX97dxDMjMk

Regina Khidekel hosted by Ari Kagan at RTN(Russian Television Network)

https://www.facebook.com/huntercollegehillel/photos/gm.1561184994197870/1222584157769681/?type=3&theater

http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.culture.studies.history.slavic/685

http://rbth.com/culture_calendar/2016/02/25/6th-annual-diaspora-israeli-russian-film-festival_570745

http://www.nyblueprint.com/russian-diaspora-israeli-russian-film-festival;