Film Screening & Discussion. Oscar

Join for a screening of the documentary film Oscar (2018), introduced by the directors Eugene Tsymbal and Aleksandr Smoljanskiand followed with a discussion moderated by Mark Lipovetsky and Daria Ezerova.

Run time: 90 minutes

This crowdfunded, award-winning project is the story of one of the most famous Russian artists, Oscar Rabin (1928-2018), who challenged the Soviet communist system and won. In 1974, he organized an open-air art exhibition, which the KGB smashed with bulldozers. This was the most effective act of civil disobedience in the USSR after Stalin’s death in 1953. The story spans three decades of the Soviet history and documents Oscar’s successful attempts to confront the regime with paints and brushes. This is a story about non-violent resistance to the forces of evil, about the borders of compromise, about people who tried to preserve internal freedom in a country that wasn’t free. It is a refugee success story: a story of love, art and human dignity.