Name: Screening and Discussion: "Putin's Witnesses"
Start: 2025-02-15T15:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-02-15T19:30:00-05:00
Location: Deutsches Haus

Screening and Discussion: "Putin's Witnesses"

First event in "The New Russian Documentary: Reclaiming Reality in the Age of Authoritarianism" featuring the directory Vitaly Mansky.
About this Event

The New Russian Documentary film series kicks off with a panel discussion about the new book, The New Russian Documentary, featuring the volume's editors Anastasia Kostina (Columbia University) and Masha Shpolberg (Bard College), in conversation with Anna Nieman (independent scholar) and Justin Wilmes (East Carolina University). A reception will follow before the film screening begins.

Putin’s Witnesses (2018)
Putin’s Witnesses (2018), a film by renowned documentary director Vitaly Mansky, provides a critical look back at Vladimir Putin’s rise to power in 1999/2000: the unexpected resignation of Russia’s president Boris Yeltsin, the appointment of Putin as interim president, and Putin’s aggressive presidential campaign which led to his election in March 2000. The film is based on the unique documentary footage shot by Mansky in 1999 and 2000, which provides personal testimonies from those involved in "Operation Successor,” including Putin himself.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Vitaly Mansky conducted by Justin Wilmes.

Watch the trailer.

Speakers

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.

Vitaly Mansky is an internationally recognized documentary film director whose films and programming practice have actively shaped the Russian documentary scene from the 2000s and and through the early 2020s. As a filmmaker, he has directed over thirty documentary productions that range greatly in their thematic scope and stylistic diversity. He is also the founder of the ArtDocFest film festival, which since 2007 and until 2022 was the largest festival of independent documentary in Russia. The festival now operates in Riga, Latvia where Mansky has been residing since 2014.

Anna Nieman holds a degree in Film Studies from VGIK (State Institute of Cinematography), Moscow. She is a film critic, independent scholar, and content developer. Her interests span the late Soviet and post-Soviet narrative and documentary cinema with a particular focus on the representation of the disenfranchised and lower social strata characters. Anna founded and produced The Garage project (2009-2011) on mubi.com, which served as a curated international VOD platform for emerging and independent filmmakers. While working with Mubi Garage, Anna curated a collection of works by contemporary Russian documentary filmmakers: Kostomarov, Rastorguev, filmmakers of Albatross Studio, and others. Anna’s articles, reviews, and essays have been published in Art of Film (Iskusstvo kino), Film Studies Journal (Kinovedcheskie zapiski), mubi.com, kultpro.ru, and Kinokultura.

is Assistant Professor of Film and Electronic Arts at Bard College. Her teaching and research explore global documentary, Central and East European cinema, ecocinema, and women’s cinema. Together with Lukas Brasiskis, she is co-editor of Cinema and the Environment in Eastern Europe (2023) and with Anastasia Kostina - of The New Russian Documentary: Reclaiming Reality in the Age of Authoritarianism (forthcoming from Edinburgh University Press). She holds a Ph.D. in Film and Media Studies & Comparative Literature from Yale University.

is an Associate Professor of Russian Studies at East Carolina University. His work primarily examines Russian and East European cinema and cultural studies of the post-Soviet period. His work appears in a range of journals and books, including Russian Literature, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, Cinemasaurus, The Russian Cinema Reader, KinoKultura, The Slavic Review, The Pushkin Review, Chekhov in Context, New England Review, and others. He holds a PhD in Slavic and East European Languages & Literatures from Ohio State University.

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 .

Please email [email protected] to request disability accommodations. Advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs. This event will be recorded. By being present, you consent to the SOF/Heyman using such video for promotional purposes.