Please join The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities, the Harriman Institute, the Department of Slavic Languages, and the Film & Media Studies Program at Columbia University School of the Arts for a screening of “School of Seduction.” The screening will be followed by a discussion with Tatiana Efremova and Anastasia Kostina.
“School of Seduction” (2019) by Alina Rudnitskaya, investigates the intricacies of gender dynamics in present-day Russia. The film follows three young women, Diana, Lisa, and Vika, who meet at the so-called “seduction classes” conducted by a problematic male psychologist, Vladimir Rakovsky, who teaches women how to get “a high-value man.” Rudnitskaya follows the three heroines for seven years, documenting how they navigate the world of unhealthy gender stereotypes, social pressures, and moral dilemmas in a bid to achieve personal happiness.
Watch the trailer.
Tatiana Efremova is Assistant Professor of Russian at the Department of Romance, German and Slavic Studies at The George Washington University. She received her PhD in Comparative Literature, with emphasis in Slavic Studies and a minor in Film, at New York University in 2022. After spending two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Harriman Institute at Columbia, she joined The George Washington University as an Assistant Professor of Russian. Her current book project “Beyond Nostalgia: Remediating the Soviet Body in Russian Culture under Putin” looks beyond the state monopoly on the Soviet past in search for alternative ways of processing the Soviet downfall in contemporary film, fashion, multimedia and performance art.
Anastasia Kostina is a scholar of documentary media, women’s film history, Soviet and Russian cinema. She holds a PhD in Film & Media Studies and Slavic Languages & Literatures from Yale University. Her current book project, “Engendering Soviet Documentary: Esfir Shub Between Theory and Practice,” explores the relationship between politics, aesthetics and gender during the nascent stage of documentary cinema. The work aims to highlight the career of Esfir Shub, the first female documentarian of the Soviet Union. Anastasia is a co-editor of a collected volume titled “The New Russian Documentary: Reclaiming Reality in the Age of Authoritarianism,” which introduces readers to the key figures, institutions, and practices of contemporary Russophone documentary cinema. In addition, her writings on film and media have been featured in such publications as Feminist Media Histories, Film Quarterly, Senses of Cinema, KinoKultura, and Apparatus.
This film screening is presented as part of The New Russian Documentary, which is inspired by the collected volume of the same title. The series presents a curated selection of essential films that challenge the status quo and offer rare insights into contemporary Russia. The full festival description and program can be found here.
