This event was held virtually as a Zoom webinar and streamed via YouTube Live.
Please join the Harriman Institute and the Russian Film Club at Columbia University for a discussion with Tatiana Efremova, Tatiana Mikhailova, Elena Prokhorova, and Alexander Prokhorov about the changing world of new Russian television.
The success of TV series like Storm (Shtorm, 2019-), Infidelity (Izmeny, 2015), and Chicks (Chiki, 2020) represents a new stage in the Russian TV industry, characterized by significantly higher production values. A number of these new shows have been showrun by established filmmakers—Boris Khlebnikov and Natalia Meschaninova (Storm), Natalia Merkulova and Aleksei Chupov (Call-Center), Darya Zhuk and Konstantin Bogomolov (Gold Diggers)—and have featured a cast of renowned film and theater actors. This shift in quality may reflect the emergence of new platforms: by the late 2010s, some of the highest-rated shows were available exclusively on streaming services. The move from state television to privately-funded streaming facilitated the exploration of previously underrepresented topics, including those of gender and sexuality. This summer, Chicks (Chiki, 2020), a series dedicated to the lives of former sex workers, became one of the highest-rated Russian TV shows of 2020.
The series are available to watch at:
Storm https://start.ru/watch/shtorm
Olga https://olga.tnt-online.ru/
Gold Diggers https://start.ru/watch/soderzhanki/season-1
Chicks https://more.tv/chiki
Method https://www.netflix.com/title/80166471?source=35
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