Monuments and Other Things that Change: screening and discussion with filmmaker Masha Vlasova
March 1, 2018 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Monuments and Other Things that Change
Walking the streets of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan’s capital, I was seized by a new apprehension of how one can feel at once welcomed and estranged, returned and displaced. The urban plan of Bishkek is a Soviet trademark, strongly resembled the town in which I spent my childhood. I imagined that I could navigate the city equipped with the memory of my hometown. I could not. I was an outsider: a speaker of Russian and English, but not Kyrgyz; a former citizen of the Soviet Union, but not a local of Bishkek.
The film departs from a found, untitled, uncredited image of a Lenin monument in Bishkek. The film evolved over three years, shaped by events as diverse as the annexation of Crimea and a failing relationship.
Sponsored by: The Film Study Center, Inner Asian and Altaic Studies, the Asia Center and the Davis Center