Hessman to Screen My Perestroika During Campus Visit
By Chris Karlesky
Award-winning film director Robin Hessman will visit Franklin & Marshall College on March 19 and 20 to meet with students and screen her feature-length documentary, My Perestroika. The screening will take place on Monday, March 19, at 7:30 p.m. in Bonchek Lecture Hall in the Barshinger Life Sciences & Philosophy Building.
The film is part of the “Russia: The 21st Century in Print and Film” film series co-sponsored by the Center for Liberal Arts & Society and Department of German and Russian.
My Perestroika follows five school friends who came of age after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The documentary premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and has received several awards, including the Center for Documentary Studies Filmmaker Award at the Full Frame Festival, Special Jury Award at Silverdocs, and Special Jury Award at Pravo Ljudski in Sarajevo. The film was broadcast on PBS in 2011 and is now airing around the world.
“After many decades of communism in the Soviet Union, people began to openly challenge and doubt society when the system started to show cracks in the 1980s,” said Jon Stone, assistant professor of Russian and Russian studies. “Hessman focuses on generations coming of age during that time. The film does a nice job of combining archival footage from the 1980s and 1990s with contemporary shots of the characters to show contrast.”
Hessman received a Student Academy Award in 1994 with James Longley for Portrait of Boy with Dog. She also co-produced Tupperware!, winner of a Peabody Award in 2005. During her visit to F&M, she will meet with several classes in different academic departments.
“The film is very good, but I’m most excited that [Hessman] will be meeting with such a diverse group of students, including those interested in Russian politics, filmmaking, language and culture,” Stone said. “We’re trying to cast a wide net to engage students who have an interest in Russia. It gives us a chance to cross boundaries.”
