Artist in Residence, April 13–17
“I'm filming and I'm crying.”-Marina Goldovskaya, The Shattered Mirror
There are people who are born in a place, others who are born of a place. Documentarian Marina Goldovskaya is of the latter strain, a citizen of Russia with a profound allegiance to its community and culture. A self-described “Homo Sovieticus,” for almost forty years Goldovskaya has made powerful documentaries that struggled against the “citadel of ideology,” in her case the State television service. In the late 1980s, as Glasnost was forming, she embarked on a film that many say accelerated the breakup of the Soviet Union: Solovky Power (1989), a disquieting exposé of the first Soviet prison camp. This revelatory documentary was eventually championed by Gorbachev, who helped find an audience for its controversial disclosures. With the return of Russian autonomy, Goldovskaya's committed documentary practice took a liberating turn. Gone was the masterful use of broadcast conventions, to be replaced by the personal and inquisitive style of such films as The Shattered Mirror and Lucky to Be Born in Russia. “It's as if she's painting a fresco,” said Naum Kleiman, director of the Film Museum in Moscow. “You can examine each figure by itself, but together they form a panorama of the entire country.”
We are pleased to have Marina Goldovskaya, a professor in the film department at UCLA, as our artist-in-residence in the ongoing series Documentary Voices. In addition to presenting a lecture on the second night of the series, Goldovskaya will be present at screenings to engage with the audience, and will hold a salon with students and others interested in her process.
Steve Seid