Documentary Offers Compelling, First-Person Lessons in Russian History

[Source: Ford Foundation, March 29, 2011]

My Perestroika, Robin Hessman’s Ford-funded documentary about the last generation of Muscovites to reach adulthood before the collapse of the Soviet Union, has premiered to excellent reviews. The documentary weaves together home movies, propaganda footage and interviews with five Russians now in their forties to explore what it was like growing up amid the turmoil of recent decades. With current uprisings in the Middle East echoing those that brought down Communism, The New York Times notes that the timing of the film's release makes it particularly resonant.

Published in The New York Times
Muscovite Lives, Entangled in History
March 21, 2011 By Clifford J. Levy

MOSCOW — The Meyersons of Moscow are not oligarchs or ex-K.G.B. agents, gangsters or alcoholics. They are a pair of public school teachers who have little in common with the stock characters often depicted in tales of this land. They disdain Communism, but warmly recall childhoods in the 1970s. They bristle at what they believe Vladimir V. Putin has done to Russia, but don’t deny that things are far better now.

Their ambivalence about their country’s standing, nearly two decades after Communism’s fall, is at the heart of My Perestroika, a new documentary that burrows into the lives of five Muscovites who came of age in the twilight of the Soviet Union.

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More Information

Visit the official website for the film
View the trailer for My Perestroika in Ford's JustFilms collection
Learn more about the Ford Foundation's JustFilms initiative