“Text”: New Genre Cinema and New Media

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Please join the Harriman Institute and the Russian Film Club at Columbia University for a discussion with Nancy Condee, Stephen Norris, and Dusty Wilmes about the 2019 Russian thriller Text. This event is part of our Contemporary Culture Series.

Klim Shipenko’s Text (2019) is a rare case of Russian thriller that has managed to be gripping, commercially successful, and critically acclaimed. Based on Dmitry Glukhovsky best-selling novel, the film’s criminal plotline is shaped by the use of social media, making Text one of the first Russian films to center on the digital second life. Shipenko’s exploration of technology as a force that splits individual’s existence is reinforced at the level of style, inviting an inquiry into the transformation of Russian genre film both in form and in content. The film’s use of explicit sex scenes and expletives raises additional questions on the state of Russian film industry in the increasingly strict conditions of censorship.

The film is available at https://start.ru/watch/tekst (Russian only).