The Bolshevik revolution, the cold war, and the collapse of the Soviet Union defined the history of the twentieth century. With such a past, what does it mean to be Russian today? Robin Hessman’s lovingly crafted documentary, My Perestroika, adopts the idea of the “everyman story,” suggesting that the unheralded lives of the last generation of Soviets to grow up behind the iron curtain hold the key to understanding the contradictions of modern Russia from the inside out.
Crafted during five years of researching and shooting, and based on almost a decade of living in Russia in the 1990s, Hessman’s film poetically interweaves an extraordinary trove of home movies, Soviet propaganda films, and intimate access to five schoolmates whose linked, but very different, histories offer a moving portrait of newly middle-class Russians living lives they could never have imagined when they were growing up. —Sundance Film Festival
My Perestroika was a very good documentary. Its seamless use of editing in melding together the past/present lives of its five primary subjects was actually impressive. Instead of going for a more academic/philosophical route, I loved how this one went for a more personal and intimate touch - without the outrageous sentimentality and misplaced nostalgia that documentaries of this type tend to do.
Fascinating doc follows a group of Russian schoolmates who came of age just as the USSR dissolved. Juxtaposes footage of their Soviet childhood with the modern upbringing of their own kids, finding haunting parallels. It's an engaging inside look at the social upheaval behind the iron curtain, and how it affected its last generation. Everything comes full circle, and we are left wondering just how much has changed.
"If you're under the impression that post-Soviet Russia is a Wild West peopled at one extreme by gold-chained Mafiosi and at the other
Screening Thursday as part of the New Directors / New Films series at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and MoMA are Robin Hessman's My Perestroika
O filme de Robin Hessman fala da história da Rússia dos últimos 30, 40 anos a partir dos depoimentos de três personagens que viveram os anos finais do regime soviético e a ascenção de Gorbachev ao… read review
