2nd Annual Russian Documentary Film Showcase: Images of Russia

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is honored at this festival of Russian docs

Comments (0) By Julia Ramey Thursday, Oct 23 2008

The 2nd Annual Russian Documentary Film Showcase: Images of Russia is dedicated to Nobel Prize-winning writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a political icon famous for telling the world about the Soviet Union's brutal work camps. The multi-day festival includes today's screening of Aleksandr Sokurov's 1998 film Dialogues with Solzhenitsyn, in which the writer, who died in August, talks in monologues and interviews about everything from his criticism of Stalin (which sent him to the Gulag and earned him a sentence of permanent internal exile) to Dostoevsky to Russian folklore. Film scholar and critic Andrey Shemyakin will be in attendance at today's Images of Russia opening to discuss Solzhenitsyn's contributions to Russian culture (not to mention how, after his sentence of exile was lifted, his writings earned the support of Nikita Khrushchev).

More About

Several other films, including Boris Sarakhatunov's A Man to Man and Sergey Miroshnichenko's Born in the USSR: 21 Up will screen at different venues across town over the weekend. Today's screening is at 7:30 p.m. River Oaks Theater, 2009 West Gray. For information and a full schedule, call 713-395-3301 or visit www.ourtexas.org. $10 to $25.
Thu., Oct. 23, 7:30 p.m., 2008