Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies

Events

April 2008

Title	Date & Time	Location	Description	Additional Info	Sponsor
Photo Exhibit Front-line Families in Russia’s North Caucasus Chechnya Film Series	April 7-May 9, 2008 8:00 AM-5:00 PM	GEB 4th Floor Gallery	Photographs by Daniel J. Gerstle By highlighting the lives of individuals, and the environment in which they live, Daniel J. Gerstle's photographs provide a glimpse of life in the North Caucasus and specifically in the war-torn region of Chechnya. Mr. Gerstle is a contributing writer for the Guardian Weekly and a Senior Associate for Social Impact, a global social enterprise helping to create positive social and economic change.	Event Flyer (PDF)	CREEES
Film Suspino Romani Film Series	April 2, 2008 7:00 PM	GRG 102	Directed by Gilian Darling Kovanic In SUSPINO-A Cry For Roma, the filmmakers expertly capture the human face of the suffering and centuries-old oppression of the Roma people (widely known as Gypsies). "The truth is, we are hated the world over, which springs from a history when we were slaves," says Emilian Niculae, a Romanian Roma-activist and refugee. Interwoven with intense scenes of violence and atrocities, SUSPINO intimately profiles a Romanian Roma refugee family who fled persecution in their home country only to find it again in Italy. Their story depicts the struggle of a people to preserve dignity in the face of extreme injustice. All films in the Romani Film Series have English subtitles.	Event flyer (PDF)	CREEES, The Romani Archives and Documentation Center, DSES
Lecture An Odyssey in Two Worlds: George the Bulgarian Dr. Jordan Baev National Defense College, Sofia, Bulgaria	April 3, 2008 3:30 PM	Garrison 0.128	George Andreytchine, frequently referred to as “George,” was a prominent Bulgarian journalist, diplomat and public figure in the early 20th century. After his disappearance in 1949, nothing more was heard of him and his name and life-achievements remained almost unknown to the general Bulgarian public more than five decades after his death. The recently published book An Odyssey in Two Worlds: George the Bulgarian and Soviet-American Relations during the First half of the 20th Century, by Dr. Jordan Baev and Dr. Kostadin Grozev, explores some newly declassified archival materials which give us a unique opportunity to reconstruct a few very dramatic and crucial episodes of the history of the United States, Soviet Russia and Bulgaria in the first half of the 20th century and to trace there some of the ideological and psychological roots and premises of the global bi-polar confrontation in the second half of the century know as the Cold War Era.	Event Flyer (PDF)	CREEES, Department of History
Film Orange Revolution	April 3, 2008 7:00 PM-10:00 PM	ACES Avaya Auditorium	Texas Premiere of Award-Winning Documentary Orange Revolution With Producer/Director Steve York The Robert S. Strauss Center's International Security Film Series invites you to the Texas state premiere of the award-winning documentary film Orange Revolution, on Thursday, April 3, 2008 at 7:00 pm in the ACES Avaya Auditorium (corner of 24th and Speedway). Parking is available at the San Jacinto Garage and the Speedway Garage. The film depicts the startling events of 2004 in Ukraine, where a stolen election and the attempted poisoning of a presidential candidate triggered a popular uprising that restored democracy and achieved a political revolution without a single bullet fired. Its honors include the President's Award at the 2007 Chicago International Documentary Festival. The film's producer/director, Steve York, will attend and lead a post-film discussion on Ukraine and the broader potential of non-violent protest movements. Also participating will be Jack DuVall, president and founding director of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, and Professor Lester Kurtz of UT-Austin's Department of Sociology. The discussion will be moderated by Strauss Fellow and LBJ School Professor Alan J. Kuperman, who coordinates the film series. Admission is free but on a first-come, first-served basis. The screening is part of the Strauss Center's International Security Film Series that screens new and forthcoming documentaries and feature films on topics of global concern, including ethnic conflict and humanitarian intervention.		Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law
Reading Colum McCann	April 3, 2008 7:00 PM	Joynes Reading Room, Carothers Building (ground floor, enter from east side)	Colum McCann will read from his fiction and answer questions. Colum McCann is the author of two collections of short stories and three novels. His fiction has been published in 26 languages and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ and other places. In 2003 Colum was named Esquire magazine's "Writer of the Year." His most recent novel, Zoli, a story of a Romani ("Gypsy") poet and intellectual, was recently published in England, Ireland, Germany and the United States to great acclaim.	Event Flyer (PDF)	CREEES, Department of English, The Romani Archives and Documentation Center
Film Taking Destiny Into Her Own Hands	April 4, 2008 7:00 PM	GRG 102	A documentary by Ricardo Lobo This visually stunning documentary follows the path of a twenty-first century Romani woman ("Gypsy") in Northern Spain, Maria Jose, who becomes a Social Worker. Colum McCann's Zoli, about which he will be speaking on campus Thursday, is also based on the life of another strong and influential Romani woman who lived during the Nazi period, and who, like Maria, had to face not only hostility from the outside world, but the objections from her own male-dominated society. The film will be followed by a Q and A session led by Colum McCann and Prof. Ian F. Hancock.	Event Flyer (PDF)	CREEES, Department of English, The Romani Archives and Documentation Center
Competition Russian Olympiada	April 5, 2008 9:00 AM-2:00 PM	RLM 4.102	CREEES will host the annual regional competition for students of the Russian Language. Students from across Texas will attend this all-day event on the UT campus.		CREEES
Lecture Leopold Bauer and the other Tradition of Modern Architecture Dr. Jindrich Vybíral Professor of Architectural History at the Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design in Prague	April 10, 2008 5:00 PM	Dean’s Conference Room, Goldsmith Hall 2.302B	Leopold Bauer was one of the leading architects in Vienna at the turn of the century, and he later succeeded Otto Wagner at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.	Event Flyer (PDF)	The School of Architecture, The Chair in Czech Studies
Film Alive Chechnya Film Series	April 10, 2008 5:00 PM	GRG 102	Alive Aleksandr Veledinsky, 2006 Kir returns home from the war in Chechnya, missing a leg, but still alive. Kir had enlisted to earn enough money to marry Tatyana. But, now that he has returned, he feels distant from her, and all that he had known. Kir is still haunted by his experiences in Chechnya, and the tragic deaths there of his two friends, fellow soldiers Nikich and Igor. Unable to adjust to civilian life, Kir begins to get into trouble. He impulsively commits a robbery, then a horrible betrayal. The ghosts of his two fallen comrades begin to appear to him. Can Nikich and Igor reach out from the grave to help their friend Kir come to terms with his past, find forgiveness in his heart for himself and others, and fully rejoin the living?	Download Event Flyer	CREEES
Film 3 Rooms of Melancholia Chechnya Film Series	April 10, 2008 7:00 PM	GRG 102	3 Rooms of Melancholia Pirjo Honkasalo, 2004 This award-winning, stunningly beautiful documentary reveals how the Chechen War has psychologically affected children in Russia and in Chechnya. Divided into three episodes or 'rooms,' the film is characterized by an elegantly paced, observational style, which uses little dialog, minimal voice-over commentary and a spare but evocative musical score. A searing examination of the unrelenting Chechen conflict, observed through the prisms of a Russian military boys academy, a war-torn town and a children's refugee camp.	Event Flyer (PDF)	CREEES
Conference Making Europe/Making Europeans: The Ethnographic and the Everyday	April 10-11, 2008		The conference is free of charge, but registration is recommended. Making Europe/Making Europeans focuses on Europe and European citizenship as a performance and as a process in the making. We want to present the diverse European realities from a "grassroots" level, based on empirical studies and reflections on the level of face-to-face contacts and everyday activities. In other words to think critically about "the ethnographic" as a mode of enquiry and the "everyday" as an important site of understanding and theory generation.	Conference Website	Center for European Studies, CREEES, et al.
Paskha Paskha: Orthodox Easter Celebration	April 11, 2008 1:00 PM-3:00 PM	Courtyard between Parlin and Calhoun Halls	A celebration of the customs, food and music of Russian Orthodox Easter.	Event Flyer	CREEES
Film Shadows	April 12, 2008 7:30 PM	Texas Union Theatre	Directed by Milcho Manchevski Join CREEES and the Austin Film Society for a sneak preview of Milcho Manchevski's acclaimed new film, "Shadows." Mr. Manchevski will be on hand for a post-film Q and A session. Writer-director Milcho Manchevski, whose "Before the Rain" won over 30 awards, including the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1994, the Independent Spirit award and the Academy Award nomination the following year, has crafted a hypnotic journey into the heart of our archaic, elemental needs and emotions colored by a chilling sense of foreboding.	Event flyer (PDF)	CREEES, Austin Film Society
Lecture Writing Under Putin: Russian Literature Today Mikhail Shishkin	April 14, 2008 12:00 PM-1:00 PM	Chicano Culture Room, Texas Union 4.206	"The border between Soviet and contemporary Russian literature does not run across time, but rather, along it. It runs across everyone who calls himself a writer. In the olden days, they either saved their souls and wrote without hope of honorariums and publications, or else they consciously sold their souls to the devil and wrote what the regime demanded of them and in return received prizes and decorations. Those talented people who tried to balance on the edge of what was allowed by the censorship, that is, to sell their soul just a little bit, in the end paid with their talent. It was cruel, but the rules of the games were clear. Now, there is the temptation of best sellers. It turns out that contemporary writer's dependence on the size of their print runs is no less destructive for real literature than depending on the regime's approval used to be. In order to have a large number of readers, the writer constantly needs to lower the bar. Talented people in Russia who write books and TV screenplays entered into a tacit agreement that the lower the bar, the more readers, viewers, and money they will have."	Event Flyer (PDF)	CREEES
Film Aleksandra Chechnya Film Series	April 14, 2008 7:00 PM	GRG 102	Directed by Aleksandr Sokurov, 2007 Free and open to the public. Shown with English subtitles. Sokurov's latest film is set in Chechnya and stars legendary Russian opera singer Galina Vishnevskaya. 'Aleksandra' is about an elderly woman who goes to visit her grandson - a Russian officer based in Chechnya. It is about people separated by war, trying to build relationships peacefully, without guns and bullets.	Event Flyer (PDF)	CREEES
Film Gadjo dilo Romani Film Series	April 16, 2008 7:00 PM	GRG 102	Directed by Tony Garlif Stéphane, a young Frenchman from Paris, has decided to travel to Romania. He is searching for Nora Luca, a singer beloved by his late father. Wandering along a frozen road, Stéphane meets the elderly Izidor—a Roma tinker—and tells him of Nora Luca and his search. Izidor seems to understand, and takes Stéphane to his village. Believing that Izidor will take him to Nora Luca when the time has come, Stéphane lives with his friend in the tinker village for several months. At first, the other villagers distrust the foreign visitor, but eventually come embrace him as one of their own. With the onset of summer, tensions ease between Stéphane and the beautiful Sabina, but as she begins to translate for the Frenchman, he comes to realize that no one has understood a single thing he had said. All films in the Romani Film Series have English subtitles.	Event flyer (PDF)	CREEES, The Romani Archives and Documentation Center, DSES
Lecture The Institutionalization of Russian Elites Dr. Alexander Duka Visiting Russian scholar, Kennan Institute in Washington	April 18, 2008 12:00 PM	Burdine 214	Alexander Duka, author and editor of the 2001 publication Regional Elites of Russia's North-West: Political and Economic Orientations, and a chapter in the 2003 Dynamics of Russian Politics: Putin's Reform of Federal-Regional Relations, is a continuing contributor to numerous Russian language periodicals concerning the solidification of the Russian Elite structure. His research intersts include Russian political culture, and the prevalence and dominance of elite-driven governmental structures in the north-west regions of the Russian Federation. He currently is the Head of the Department on Sociology of Authorities, Power Structures and Civil Society in the Sociological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.	Event Flyer (PDF)	CREEES, Department of Government, Department of Sociology
Lecture Isadora Duncan's Russian Legacy Meg Brooker MFA Candidate, Department of Theater and Dance and the College of Fine Arts	April 21, 2008 12:00 PM-1:00 PM	Texas Union Asian Culture Room 4.224	Heralded as the founder of modern dance, Isadora Duncan left a legacy that is truly unique. Meg Brooker will discuss the famed American dancer's experiences in Moscow, the school she started there, and the dance troupes that continue her traditions to this day.	Event Flyer (PDF)	CREEES, Department of Theatre and Dance
Czech Student Play ''Africa: The Czechs Among the Cannibals''	April 25-26, 2008 7:00 PM	CAL 100	Jára Cimrman Theater Presents: The North American Premier of "Africa: The Czechs Among the Cannibals" In Czech with English Supertitles Friday and Saturday, April 25th and 26th 7:00 pm Calhoun 100 (free admission) CIMRMAN Smoljak / Svěrák	Download a flier for the Czech student play (PDF, 114K)
Russian Student Play ''Ordinary Miracle''	April 26-27, 2008 7:00 PM	Texas Union Theatre, 2.228	The play performance will be in Russian with English supertitles. Admission is free.	Download a flier for the Russian student play (PDF, 570K)	DSES, UT Russian Language Students
Film Shutka Romani Film Series	April 30, 2008 7:00 PM	GRG 102	Directed by Aleksandar Manic Shutka, a small town deep in the Balkans, is considered by many to be among the poorest places in Europe. But for those who call Shutka home, a man’s wealth is not determined by money. In Shutka, the wealthy man is the man who knows how to “reinvent” himself. Perhaps this is why it is said that in Shutka, competition, folklore and mysticism thrive like nowhere else. For Shutka is a place where canaries, pigeons and ganders are trained to compete for trophies in singing, flying and boxing; where evil genies and vampires are exterminated with fire and with sheer willpower; where popular songs are composed in less than 15 minutes; and where God is worshiped more than anywhere else in the world. All films in the Romani Film Series have English subtitles.	Event flyer (PDF)	CREEES, The Romani Archives and Documentation Center, DSES