Registration for external guests closes at 4PM on November 12. Registration will automatically close at that time. Columbia/Barnard affiliates with access to campus may register at the door.
If you are a Columbia/Barnard affiliate with campus access, please use your Columbia/Barnard email when registering. Each attendee must have their OWN registration and email address.
Please join the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities, the Department of Slavic Languages, Film & Media Studies at Columbia University School of the Arts, and the Harriman Institute for a screening of “Esfir,” directed by Cynthia Madansky.
“Esfir” (2020) is a contemporary interpretation of an unrealized script titled “Women” (1933) by prominent Soviet director Esfir Shub. In her original project, Shub sought to explore the “women’s question” in Soviet Russia by following four heroines from different walks of life. Reflecting on the history of Shub’s unfinished film, Cynthia Madansky puts it in conversation with the stories of four women in present-day Russia. The result is a beautifully crafted experimental documentary that examines the current status of feminism in the country.
The screening takes place in conjunction with the talk by Anastasia Kostina, ‘I Want to Make a Film About Women’: The Story of One Unrealized Feminist Manifesto.
Cynthia Madansky is an artist and filmmaker whose work engages with themes of nationalism, border transgression, nuclear abolition, feminism, and militarism. Over the past 30 years, Madansky has created more than 40 visually distinctive moving image works that foreground human experience and personal testimony within landscapes affected by nationalism, war, and environmental injustice. Her award-winning films have been presented as both single-channel works and multi-channel installations at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, Istanbul Modern, the Walker Art Center, the Berlin Film Festival, and the Rotterdam Film Festival.
