Monday, February 28, 2011

Job Opportunity for Columbia Students!

The Harriman Institute is seeking student workers to provide support to staff and faculty of the Institute and assist with event management. Duties include clerical and administrative functions such as filing, faxing, photocopying, running errands, posting flyers, answering phones and other tasks.

Qualifications: Work-study eligible. Knowledge of Microsoft applications as well as the ability to multitask. Pluses include previous office/clerical experience as well as an interest in Russia, Eurasia, and Eastern Europe.

Hours: Students must be able to work between 10 and 20 hours a week.

Our hours of operation are Monday-Friday 9:00 AM -9:00 PM.

For more information and to apply, please email lch2111@columbia.edu.

Events This Week

"Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams," 1219 SIPA, 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM (Tuesday)

Join the Harriman Institute for a talk by Charles King.

Charles King is Professor of International Affairs and Government at Georgetown University. He is the author most recently of Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams (W.W. Norton, 2011) as well as Extreme Politics: Nationalism, Violence, and the End of Eastern Europe (Oxford University Press, 2010), The Ghost of Freedom: A History of the Caucasus* (Oxford University Press, 2008), and other books on the history and politics of eastern Europe and Eurasia. In 2010 he completed two terms as Chair of the Faculty of Georgetown's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.

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"Winning LGBT Equality in Russia," Faculty House, Garden Room 2, 5:30 PM (Tuesday)

Join the Harriman Institute for a talk by Nikolai Alekseev (Head of the Russian LGBT Human Rights Project (GayRussia.Ru) and Head of Moscow Pride Organizing Committee.) Alekseev won a ground breaking human rights decision against the mayor of Moscow at the European Court of Human Rights in October 2010, and will speak about the Russian LGBT movement. Adjunct Assistant Professor Tanya Domi, the School of International and Public Affairs will moderate the discussion.

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Maslenitsa Celebration,
Lerner East Ramp Lounge, 7-8 PM (Tuesday, TOMORROW!)

Celebrate the beginning of Spring with RIA and The Birch. We will have bliny, caviar, Lady Maslenitsa/Kostroma doll making (sorry, no effigy burning), and matryoshka doll painting. See you there!


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Farewell Gulsary! (Proshchai, Gul'sary!, Kazakhstan, 2008), 703 Hamilton, 7:20 PM (Tuesday)

Join Kamilya Abilova and the undergraduate branch of
OASIES (Organization for the Advancement of Studies of Inner Eurasian Societies) for this exciting movie screening!

Farewell Gulsary! (Proshchai, Gulsary!) by the Kazak director Ardak Amirkulov is a nostalgic film, both in tenor and mode. It is the second rendition of the eponymous short story by the famous Kyrgyz writer Chingiz Aitmatov about the love of Tanabai, a devout Kazakh communist and a WWII hero, for his beautiful stallion Gulsary, who is a symbol of freedom and idealism, everything the main character stands to lose to the crash collectivization in the Far East in the 1940s and 50s (Kinokul'tura).


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Russian Movie Night: Брат II, 1219 SIPA, 8:30-10:30 PM (Thursday)

Join the Harriman Undergraduate Initiative! "Last time Брат was a huge success, now they come to Brighton Beach for the sequel!"

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Events This Week

"Russia’s Post-Soviet Landscape" 1219 IAB, 12:00pm (Wednesday)


Join the Harriman Institute for a talk by
Susan Richards (Author of Lost and Found in Russia). After the fall of communism Susan Richards started chronicling the lives and careers of a group of Russians living far from the capital. She revisited them repeatedly over the course of 16 years, observing the way in which the larger forces unleashed in Russia's politics and economy were being reflected or resisted in their own life decisions, and those of the communities around them. She reflects on what she saw and what it might tell us about the changed nature of Russia today.


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"Illicit Indicators and the Contested Politics of Numbers" 1501 SIPA, 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM (Wednesday)


International policies on issues such as human trafficking, drug smuggling and armed conflict depend upon accurate measures and statistics of these "hidden" problems. Yet, reliable statistics or data regarding these practices are often in short supply, subject to politicization and even deliberate misrepresentation. Exaggerating the numbers of victims of an armed conflict, inflating the value of the transnational drug trade or downplaying patterns of domestic violence are commonplace practices adopted by states and international officials to serve political agendas. This panel on Illicit Numbers, comprised of distinguished scholars and practitioners, will investigate the dangers of using problematic statistics and dubious measures in the formulation and conduct of public policy.

Participants: Peter Andreas (Professor, Department of Political Science, Brown University. Co-Editor of Sex, Drugs and Body Counts: The Politics of Numbers in Global Crime and Conflict (Cornell University Press 2010), Elizabeth Eagen (Program Officer, Human Rights Data Initiative, Human Rights and Governance Grants | Information Program, Open Society Foundations), Sally Merry (Professor of Anthropology and Law and Society, New York University and President-elect of the American Ethnological Society), Lara Nettelfield (Post-Doctoral Fellow, Harriman Institute, Columbia University, and contributor to Sex, Drugs and Body Counts)

This event is part of the
“Human Rights in the Post-Communist World: Strategies and Outcomes ” series (Harriman Core Project 2010-2011). This event is free and open to the public. No Tickets, no reservations required. Seating is on a first come, first served basis.


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"Gender Equality and Women’s Rights in Georgia: Opportunities and Challenges" 1219 SIPA, 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM (Thursday)


Join the Harriman Institute and the Program in Economic and Political Development (EPD) for a talk by
Rusudan Kervalishvili, Deputy Speaker of the Parliament of Georgia Chair of Gender Council


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"Imagining Mazeppa: From Byron to Broadway to Hollywood" 1219 SIPA, 7:00 PM (Thursday)


Mazeppa as a Tatar prince? As an American Indian maiden? Sophia Loren as Mazeppa? Mazeppa on Bonanza?
Alexander Motyl, Catharine Nepomnyashchy, Vasyl Lopukh, and Vasyl Makhno take you on a romp through unusual historical representations of the famed Ukrainian Hetman-from the Romantics to 19th-century American and British theatre and dime novels to 20th-century Hollywood Westerns and Broadway musicals. The evening will consist of readings, music, slides, and film. If you think you know Ivan Mazepa-think again.


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Brestskaya Krepost' (Brest Fortress) Hamilton 717, 8:00 PM (Thursday)


Join RIA and watch this movie in honor of Defender of the Fatherland Day. The holiday celebrates people who are serving or were serving in the Russian Armed Forces (both men and women), but nationally it has also more recently come to include the celebration of men as a whole, and to act as a counterpart of International Women's Day on March 8. Brestskaya Krepost' is a war drama set during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, in which Russian troops held on to a border stronghold for nine days. Here is the link for the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B11CLxzhqPg (133 minutes long). There will be English subtitles!!


Lent is almost here, but first… MASLENITSA!!




Come get your blini and party on

with

the Russian International Association

and The Birch

Tuesday, March 1st, 7-8 pm

Lerner Ramp Lounge East


Check out these videos!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtD40Lp18XU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PpN9Wq-Dt80#at=12

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hyt_3LvAMIY#at=67

http://02varvara.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/maslenitsa-2010-it’s-still-goin’-on-strong/


Monday, February 14, 2011

Come See THIEVES BY LAW

The Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University invites you

to take a revealing look at the mores, culture, and values of some of the most notorious Russian criminal figures and the very first new money in post-Soviet Russia obtained by murder, fraud, and brazen robbery artfully featured in


THIEVES BY LAW,

director Alexander Gentelev, 2010, Israel.


The favorite of the press at the last Tribeca International Film Festival, this feature documentary follows the personal stories of three Russian Mafiosi-cum-businessmen. They started with racket, robbery, and murder, they are now multi- millionaires. Their influence and connections go deep into Russian government and security apparatus. Some are awarded by the Russian Orthodox Patriarchy for their generosity, and newly found dedication to God. They are the face of Russian capitalism hiding behind the veneer of respectability. They desperately look for and often find legitimacy and acceptance both at home and abroad. They are proudly Russian patriots but their values, culture, mannerisms, and language are airily reminiscent of the new Ukrainian ruling class.

Hyperbole? Come and see for yourself.


When: Thursday, February 17, 2011, 7:30 PM.


Where: 717 Hamilton Hall, Columbia University.


The copy of the film was provided by its director Mr. Gentelev especially with the purpose of screening it by the Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University.


In Russian, English, and Hebrew with English voiceover/subtitles. Free and open to the public. Yuri Shevchuk will introduce the film and hold a traditional post-screening discussion.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eixjRLlvtk


http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2010/04/tribeca-film-festival-2010-thieves-by-law-alexander-gentelev/


http://www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/87139752.html

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Wild East: The Best of Soviet Action Films (Yes, please!)

The Film Society of Lincoln Center presents:

Wild East: The Best of Soviet Action Films
February 11-17

"Unlike the Red Westerns of the American Wild West, Soviet Easterns usually took place on the eastern steppes of the USSR, especially during the Russian Revolution or following the Civil War. Many of the Easterns use similar methods as the American Western to dramatize the Civil War in Central Asia in the 1920s and 30s, when the Red Army fought against Islamic Turkic basmachi rebels. The mountains of Kopetdag can be seen as an equivalent to Monument Valley and Sir Darya River as the Rio Grande. Add the gun-slinging ethos, horse-riding pioneers of a sort (though often ideological in this case), the bounty hunter traversing difficult terrain with outlaw in tow, and railroading and taming the wild frontier, and you have a generic mirror image of the American genre. Intriguingly, one possible influence on these Soviet filmmakers may have been the screenings of Serge Leone’s For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly at the Moscow international film festival in 1969.

Seagull Films presents in collaboration with Mosfilm and Mardjani Foundation. Curated by Alla Verlotsky and Sergey Lavrentyev. Special thanks to Karen Shakhnazarov and Richard Pena."

This One, Too!

This Song Will Stay with You Always

"Slavei" from Wesleyan (We Like!)

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Check out some Czech at the Film Society of Lincoln Center

The Fantastic World of František Vláčil
February 2-10

"We are pleased to present this major survey of Vláčil’s work - “The Czech New Wave's formalist, post-expressionist wrecking ball” (Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice). With in-person appearances by actor Jan Kacer (Valley of the Bees) and critic Peter Hames (author of The Czechoslovak New Wave).

The least-known major figure of the 1960s Czech New Wave, František Vláčil studied aesthetics and art history before embarking on a film career marked by its recurring theme of conformity at odds with free expression, its use of the past as a prism for understanding the present and, above all, for its dazzling visual poetry. Although duly celebrated for his 13th-century epic
Marketa Lazarová—voted the greatest Czech film of all time in a 1998 poll of national critics—Vláčil made over a dozen additional features that run the gamut from lyrical children’s fables to incisive critiques of Czech politics and social mores in the aftermath of the Second World War. Accused of subversion and unable to work following the Soviet invasion of 1968, Vláčil returned to filmmaking in the late 1970s and remained active until his death in 1999. His full body of work, only now being discovered internationally, reveals the sure hand of a master.

Acknowledgments: National Film Archive, Prague; Bionaut Films; British Film Institute/Geoff Andrew and Julie Pearce, Czech Centre London/Renata Clark, Czech Center New York/Pavla Niklova and Radka Krizek, Peter Hames, Jan Kacer, Irena Kovarova."

For more information, visit: http://www.filmlinc.com/wrt/onsale/vlacil.html or