04 February 2010
U.S. Filmmaker Projects Real Life in Russia, America
Films help foster cultural understanding
Washington — At 10 years old, Robin Hessman begged her parents for a subscription to Soviet Life magazine. Fascinated by the publication’s pictures of Soviet children at school and at play, Hessman did not think these young people looked so very different from herself or her friends, and she imagined what it would be like to live in this foreign land.
A child of the 1970s and early 1980s, the American filmmaker grew up in the midst of the Cold War. Though she explains that American media of the time encouraged her to see the USSR as the United States’ enemy, Hessman could not suppress her curiosity about real life behind the Iron Curtain. Hessman’s insights as a child would come to symbolize her future professional life: a documentary film producer and director with a keen interest in fostering an honest cultural exchange between Americans and the people of the former Soviet Union.
Hessman sees her medium as a powerful vehicle for cultural diplomacy and understanding.
Documentary films “are stories told by people to make people understand human experience. They are really one of the most valuable ways for cultures to learn about each other,” Hessman said. Through documentary film, the viewer can “experience all of the nuances and images and sounds of a place, and really get to know people.”
Hessman’s latest film, My Perestroika, which began screening January 24 at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, captures her effort to bring to American audiences a slice of real life in modern-day Russia. The project follows five Russians of a unique generation: the last to come of age under the Soviet Union and the first to live as adults and raise children in a democratic Russia. (“Perestroika” refers to the restructuring of the Soviet political and economic system through reforms introduced in 1987 by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.)
“I’m telling the story of Russians of my generation,” said Hessman, who is 36 years old. “When they are teenagers the country starts transforming rapidly. They graduated from college at just the moment the USSR collapses, leaving them no model to follow in a new society. Everyone has to figure it out for themselves.”
Borya and Lubya Meyerson, the married couple on whom the film centers, grew up across the street from each other in a residential neighborhood of Moscow. Both history teachers at Moscow School #57, the Meyersons welcomed Hessman into their home, their jobs and their 9-year-old son’s life, and introduced her to some of their former school classmates whom they have known since childhood. Hessman combines interviews with the Meyersons and three of their classmates, the home movies they shared with her, and state-made propaganda films to convey the complexity and richness of the subjects’ childhoods and adult lives.
Hessman found the home movies played an especially critical role in giving her audience an authentic perspective.
“Americans have never had the opportunity to see anything of normal everyday life in the Soviet Union. Home movies are such a beautiful, personal, intimate way to tell a story; they’re taken to preserve memories for future generations. It’s such a different point of view from what most Americans have seen from the Soviet Union,” she said.
By providing a personal, insider’s angle on her subjects, Hessman said she “absolutely thought the film might change people’s perspectives, break apart stereotypes of life in the Soviet Union or what life today in Russia is like.” If nothing else, she hopes My Perestroika helps her audience understand that “there is so much more to know,” she said.
While My Perestroika portrays Russian life for American audiences, Hessman also strives to educate Russians about the nuances of American life and culture. Since 2006, she has been curator of the documentary program of the American Film Festival (Amfest) in Moscow. Sponsored in part by the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, Amfest brings to Russia American films that do not make it to Moscow’s multiplex theaters. These movies have included many documentaries, like Trouble the Water, which tells the story of two people caught in Hurricane Katrina when it devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005, and Garbage Warrior, the tale of a New Mexico man who lobbies for legislation that will allow him to build sustainable housing from discarded tires, cans and bottles. Filmmakers attend the festival and hold discussions with the audience.
“People will talk to the filmmakers for hours about how the films changed their lives,” Hessman said.
The festival draws people from the greater Moscow area, as well as many students who travel to the city for the screenings. At times, Amfest has expanded its reach beyond Moscow to surrounding communities that may find value in particular films. For example, a screening of Hear and Now, the story of a couple’s life before and after cochlear implant surgery, informed a group of deaf Russians that this type of treatment existed. The couple in the film had been deaf since birth, and the cochlear implants created for them a new, aural world.
When selecting films for the festival, Hessman takes into account their educational value, with consideration for the insights the film will give the audience into American life. However, her decision to screen a film depends on more than the message the film may send.
“The films are works of art. They are not propaganda or educational for the sole purpose of educating. That’s a wonderful part of it, but really it’s to tell a beautiful story,” Hessman said.
Hessman would love to continue to expand Amfest to reach a wider audience.
“I think it’s absolutely had an impact on people who have seen these films. It would be nice on both sides if there was more opportunity to show films to more people,” she said.
(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)
