Shortly after Stalin’s death, a British television company, Associated Rediffusion, established the first television exchange between Britain and the USSR (ruffling feathers at the BBC). Partnering with the Moscow Television Studio, during the fall of 1957, the company produced a documentary film, USSR Now. The 1958 film is a tour of the USSR that reaches from the Far North to the Black Sea, and is a look inside a country that had been largely closed for two decades. A 35 mm print from the British Film Institute National Archive will be screened.

The film will be introduced and discussed by Ian Christie, Anniversary Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck in the Department of Film, Media and Cultural Studies and Raisa Sidenova, a PhD Candidate at Yale University, who discovered the film while conducting dissertation research. The discussion will be moderated by Johanna Conterio, Postdoctoral Research Associate at Birkbeck in the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology.

This event is being held in conjunction with the workshop, “The Black Sea in the Socialist World,” which is supported by the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies, the Wellcome Trust, the Society for the Social History of Medicine, and the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities. The screening is free and open to the public, and will be followed by a wine reception. We hope to see you there!

6 February 2015 at 18:00
Birkbeck Cinema, 43 Gordon Square, London

Registration essential – book your place here.