Artdocfest

ARTDOCFEST: Uncensored Russian documentary festival

This past weekend I took breaks from my "intense studying" aka simultaneously binge watching Law and Order episodes while learning vocab to go and watch two of the many documentaries being shown as part of Russia's largest annual documentary festival "Artdocfest".

This year for the first time in Artdocfest's seven year history, the festival was also held in St Petersburg as well as its native Moscow. This was also the first year that the festival didn't receive any state funding because of the director Vitaly Mansky's public opposition to the Kremlin's anti-Ukrainian media campaign and its activities in the country. The culture minister labelled Mansky's behaviour "anti-Russian" and "anti-state".

So naturally, after such an intriguing introduction to the festival I was desperate to go and see for myself. On Saturday I watched Kirill Sakharnov's film Olya's Love. The film follows the trajectory of an activist's lesbian relationship as discriminatory laws against the LGBT community are passed by the Russian government. From the extremely moving trailer I was expecting to watch something extremely hard-hitting and difficult to watch but what I actually watched was a beautiful and touching love story, an uplifting tribute to those who boldly stand up for who they are even in the most difficult of situations.

The audience's reaction to the film was also fascinating. During scenes that contained any kind of violence, there was expectedly a very tense silence but during scenes featuring rants by homophobic campaigners the audience members around me burst out laughing at their ridiculous and ludicrous behaviour. The people who had sought out this documentary were obviously so accustomed to this kind of outrageous and blatant hatred that it has become somewhat of a joke.

The next day I went to see Swiss director Alain Margot's film Je suis Femen. The film follows artist and activist Oksana Shachko, one of the founding members of the Ukrainian feminist movement Femen, as she and her fellow activists put their personal safety at risk in order to stage topless protests in Ukraine, France, Belarus and Russia.

Sextremism at its best

For the few of you who haven't heard me mention it, last year I discovered the Free The Nipple movement in the United States and became obsessed. In my opinion, Femen contains the same visually shocking and challenging element of Free The Nipple but amplified to a much larger and more political scale.

One of the most interesting quotes of the film was from another of the founders who takes a much more administrative role in the group's activities. She explained that it is important that Femen has a sexy and feminine face since that is not how people expect radical feminists to look. Their aim is to challenge every restrictive construct the patriarchy has imposed on them.

Oksana herself reinforced this point when she took questions from the audience via Skype after the film. I'm sure you can imagine for yourselves how insanely excited and fan-girly I became.

When I look back on my first semester in St Petersburg, that question and answer session is one of my most exciting highlights, if not the most. I was sat listening to a Ukrainian woman discuss issues very close to my heart from her new home in Paris following her exile from her home country for her activism. And all in Russian.

At this point I inexplicably felt that I had made it to the big time linguistically and personally. I very much look forward to more of that feeling come next semester.