Dr. OKSANA SARKISOVA
Central European University, OSA Archivum
Arany János utca 32 Budapest 1051 Hungary
sarkisovao@ceu.edu
www.ceu.edu / www.osaarchivum.org
WORK
2014 – present
Research Fellow (tenured), Central European University, Open Society
Archives
2012- present
Festival Director, Verzio International Documentary Human Rights Film
Festival
2010-2014
Associate Research Fellow, Central European University, Open Society
Archives
2004-2012
Program Director, Verzio International Documentary Human Rights Film
Festival
2004 – 2007
Audio-Visual Research Archivist, OSA Archivum
EDUCATION
1998 – 2004
Central European University, History Department, PhD Summa Cum
Laude. Dissertation title: “Envisioned Communities: Representations of
nationalities in non-fiction cinema in Soviet Russia, 1923-1935”
1997-1998
Central European University, Nationalism Department, MA
1991-1997
Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia, Department of Sociology, MA
RECENT RESEARCH PROJECTS
2006-present "Snapshot Histories: Family Photography and Generational Memories of Russia's
Socialist Century," collaborative research with Dr. Olga Shevchenko
2009-2012
"Musicals in Transatlantic Cinematographic Exchange (East-Central European and
Soviet musical cinema of the 1930-1960s)"
1
2004
Dziga Vertov’s early works and their reception in the 1920s (co-researcher with Dr.
Yurii Tsivian)
2003
“Post-Communist Condition,” organized and coordinated by Zentrum für Kunst
und Medientechnologie (ZKM), Karlsruhe.
SCHOLARSHIPS
05/2014
Research and screening series “Past Continuous: Conflicting Historical Legacies in
Contemporary Eastern European Cinema”, IWM, Vienna
2007-2011
Post-Doctoral Fellow at European University Institute (Florence), member of the
research group “Europe and Beyond: Transfers, Networks and Markets for Musical
Theatre in Modern Europe, 1740-1960”
2006-2007
Wenner-Gren Foundation, International Collaborative Research Grant (with Dr.
Olga Shevchenko) for field work stage of research ‘Snapshot Histories: Family
Photography and Generational Memory of Russia's Socialist Century’
2003
Zeit-Stiftung scholarship to participate in “History Takes Place”: Summer
Academy of European Memorial Sites, St. Petersburg.
2003
Guest researcher at Geisteswissenschaftliches Zentrum Ostmitteleuropeas
(GWZO) for the project Visuelle und historische Kulturen Ostmitteleuropas im
Prozess staatlicher und gesellschaftlicher Modernisierung seit 1918.
2002
Central European University Research Scholarship to the Berlin BundesarchivFilmarchiv
2000
St. Petersburg Center for History of Ideas scholarship to attend 3rd International
Summer School of St. Petersburg Branch of the Russian Academy of Science
“Russian Utopianism: From an Ideal State to the Perfect Society”
1999-2000
Visiting Research Fellow at Rutgers University, Art History Department
TEACHING
2015
Fields of Vision: Historical Imagery between Art and Archiving (with Ioana Toma)
2014
Cultures of Remembrance: Conflicting Past and Documentary Cinema in Central
and Eastern Europe
2012-13
Human Rights and Documentary Cinema (with Dr. Renata Uitz)
2009
Film and Education (Pedagogical Doctoral School at ELTE, Budapest)
2006
Cinema and History in Eastern Europe (Williams College, US)
2005
Reel Versions of Transition, (with Dr. Renata Uitz), CEU
2
2003
Nationalism Studies: Theories and Approaches, Central European University
PUBLICATIONS
Books
 Past for the Eyes: East European Representations of Communism in Cinema and Museums
after 1989, Budapest: CEU Press, 2008 (co-edited with Peter Apor)
 Screening Soviet Ethnicities: Kulturfilms from the Far North to Central Asia, London: I.
B. Tauris, forthcoming in 2016.
Book Chapters
 “The Adventures of the kulturfilm in Soviet Russia” in Birgit Beumers (ed.), Russian
Cinema Directory, forthcoming in 2016.
 “The Album as Performance: Notes on the Limits of the Visible” (with Olga Shevchenko),
forthcoming in 2016.
 “Arctic Travelogues: Conquering the Soviet North” in Scott MacKenzie, Anna Stenport
(eds.) Films on Ice: Cinemas of the Arctic. Edinburgh University Press, 2015, pp. 222-234.
 “Soviet Past in Domestic Photography: Events, Evidence, Erasure” (with Olga
Shevchenko) in Olga Shevchenko (ed.) Double Exposure: Memory and Photography.
Transaction Publishers, 2014, pp. 147-176.
 “Sing with Us, Spend like Us! Images of Consumption in East European Musical Films
during the Cold War” in Magdalina Waligorska (ed.), Music, Longing and Belonging:
Articulations of the Self and the Other in the Musical Realm. Cambridge Scholar
Publishers, 2013, pp. 12-27.
 “Soviet Cultural Policy in Musical Theatre and Cinema, 1917-1938” in Philipp Ther (ed),
Die Geschichte der Kulturpolitik. Die kontinentalen Imperien in Europa im Vergleich. (Die
Gesellschaft der Oper. Musikkultur europäischer Metropolen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert
Band 10) Wien – Köln – Weimar: Oldenburg Böhlau 2012.
 “Filming a Liveable Past: The 1970s–80s in Contemporary Russian Cinema” in Stefan
Berger, Chris Lorenz, and Billie Melman (eds.), Popularizing National Pasts, 1800 to the
Present. New York, London: Routledge, 2012, pp 249-266.
 “Cine-intellectuals or cine-proletariat? Ideological Allegiances and Professional Identities
in early Soviet Cinema,” in: Fiona Björling & Alexander Pereswetoff-Morath (eds), Words,
Deeds and Values: the Intelligentsias in Russia and Poland during the Nineteenth and
Twentieth Centuries, Lund: Lund University, Dept. of East and Central European Studies,
2005, pp. 253-68.
 “Inter-national Loyalties: A/Olexander Dovzhenko’s Films in the Context of the
Nationality Policy in Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s” in: Peter Roubal and Vaclav Veber
(eds.), Prague Perspectives (I). History of East Central Europe and Russia. Prague, 2004,
pp. 237-254.
 “Long Farewells: The Anatomy of the Soviet Past in Contemporary Russian Cinema” in
Oksana Sarkisova and Péter Apor (eds.) Past for the Eyes: East European Representations
of Communism in Cinema and Museums after 1989, Budapest: CEU Press, 2008, pp. 143180.
3
Journal Articles
 “Taming the frontier: Alexander Litvinov’s expedition films and representations of
indigenous minorities in the Far East,” in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, 9:1
(2015): 2-23
 “Searching for a Soviet Past: Amateur Photography and Family Memory”, Novoe
Literaturnoe Obozrenie 131 (2015) (in Russian, with Olga Shevchenko)
 “‘They came, shot everyone, and that’s the end of it’: Local Memory, Amateur
Photography, and the Legacy of State Violence in Novocherkassk” Slavonica Vol. 17
(2011) (with Olga Shevchenko).
 “Folk Songs in Soviet Orchestration: Vostokfil'm’s Song of Happiness and the forging of
the New Soviet Musician” in Studies of Russian and Soviet Cinema 4:3 (2010): 261-281.
 “Between Elias and Foucault: Discipline, Photography, and the Soviet Childhood”, Social
Psychology Quarterly 73 (2010): 1-4 (with Olga Shevchenko).
 “The Soviet Past in Amateur Photography: The Work of Memory and Forgetting,”
Otechestvennye Zapiski 4 (43) 2008, pp. 205-217 (with Olga Shevchenko, in Russian).
 “Across One Sixth of the World: Dziga Vertov, Travel Cinema, and Soviet Patriotism” in
October 121 (2007): 19-40.
 “Life As It Should Be? Early Non-fiction Cinema in Russia,” Medien und Zeit 1 (2003):
41-61.
 “Early Soviet Kulturfilms: the ‘cine-conquest’ of Caucasus,” Kulturologicheskie Zapiski,
1 (2003) (in Russian).
 “Archäologie eines vergessenen Konzepts: discursive und institutionelle Entwiklung des
Kulturfilms in Russland,” Spurensuche. “Zauber der Exotik”: Aspekte ihrer
Popularisierung Heft 1-4 (2002): 64-89.
 “Tell Me Who Your Enemy Is. Chechen War in Russian Cinema,” Neprikosnovennyi
Zapas, 26/6 (2002): 94-101.
 “Edges of Empire: Representations of Borderland Identities in Early Soviet Cinema,” Ab
Imperio 1 (2000): 167-186.
 “Present Perfect or Present Progressive? Temporality in Early Soviet Avant-Garde Visual
Arts,” in: Helena Goscilo and Michael Brewer (eds), Studies in Slavic Cultures 1 (2000):
103-132.
Encyclopaedia and Handbook Entries
 “A Sixth Part of the World,” Pamir: Roof of the World,” “In Spring,” “The Court of
Honour” entries in Birgit Beumers (ed.), Directory of World Cinema: Russia 2, 2015.
 “Conflicting Pasts: Programming Retrospectives at the Verzio Film Festival” in Alex
Marlow-Mann (ed.) Archival Film Festivals. Film Festival Yearbook 5. St Andrews Film
Studies, 2013.
 “Vertov the Traveller: a Modern Nomad” in Thomas Tode and Barbara Wurm (eds), Dziga
Vertov. The Vertov Collection at the Austrian Film Museum. Vienna: Österreichisches
Filmmuseum, 2006, pp. 17-21.
4
 “Grenzeprojektionen: Bilder von Grenzgebieten im sowjetischen Film” in: Die Wieser
Enzyklopädie des europäischen Ostens, volume XI, edited by Karl Kaser, Dagmar
Gramshammer-Hohl, Robert Pichler. Klagenfurt: Wieser-Verlag, 2003, pp 439-467.
SELECT PUBLIC LECTURES AND CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
08/15 International Conference “Arctic Cinemas and the Documentary Ethos”, University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Paper presented “Moving Through the Century: Northern
Nomads in Nonfiction Cinema”
05/15 Colloquium “Film, Democracy, and Liberal Education”, Center for Human Values,
Princeton University. Paper presented: “Archive, Authenticity, and Authorship in
Expedition Film”
04/15 “Re-Mediating the Archive: Image, Word, Performance”, International Symposium, New
York University. Paper presented: “Archival Kino-Eye: Dziga Vertov and Curated Image
Archives”
09/14 “New Directions in Russian and Soviet Cinema Studies: An international symposium,
Trinity College, University of Cambridge. Paper presented: “The Transnational challenge
in Soviet cinema studies”
3/14
"Archive/Image. New Archival Epistemes in the Digital Landscape," OSA Archivum at
CEU. Paper presented: “Archiving Private Lives: Domestic Film and Photography in the
Digital Age”
11/13 45th Annual Convention of Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies,
Boston, USA. Paper presented “"Album as a performance: Notes on the limits of the
visible” (with Olga Shevchenko)
10/13 International workshop Photography and Visual Orders in the History of the Russian
Empire and the Soviet Union, German Historical Institute, Moscow. Paper Presented:
“Snapshots of War in Russian Domestic Photo Arhives”
10/13 Centenary Conference of Slavic Studies “The Language of Power, the Power of
Language, Leiden University. Paper Presented: “Why should you know this, son?” The
heroic, the banal and the improbable in the family memories of the Soviet past”
05/13 Conference “Iconology Old And New. Current Theoretical Interfaces: Iconicity,
Semiotics, Historicity”, Central European University. Paper presented: “Historical Icons
Made and Unmade: Cinema as Document, History as Fiction”
03/13 Guest Lectures organized by Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan. Presentations
"Constructing Nations and Landscapes in Early Soviet Cinema"; "East European Musical
Films During the Cold War" and "Soviet Cultural Policy in Musical Theater and Cinema,
1917-1940"
12/12 Workshop “Russian and Soviet Photography as Historical Source”, Basel University.
Paper presented “Framing the Elusive Soviet Subject: Domestic Photographic Archives
and Generational Transmission in Contemporary Russia”
5
11/12 44th Annual Convention of Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies,
New Orleans, USA. Paper presented “Empire in the Album: Amateur Travel
Photography in Post-war Russia"
06/11 Workshop “Private Eyes. Geschichte, Theorie und Praxis des europäischen
Amateurfilms”, Österreichsche Gesellschaft für Zeitgeschichte, Österreichisches
Filmmuseum, Ludwig Boltzmann Institut für Geschichte und Gesellschaft. Paper
presented “Raw and Edited: Historical Narratives in Amateur Footage and Montage
Cinema”
04/11 British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies Annual Conference,
Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. Paper presented “‘Movies for the East: Policies and
Practices of Vostokfilm studio (1926-1935)”
3/11
Conference “Mežrabpom-Film und die deutsch-russischen Filmbeziehungen der 1920er
und 1930er Jahre,” Deutsches Historisches Institut (Moscow). Paper presented “Spiel mit
dem Nichtgespielten: Die Produktions- und Verleihpolitik der Kulturfilme von
Mežrabpomfilm”
03/11 Workshop “Hegemonic Structures of Music: Politics of Occupation, Emotions and Their
Transfer: Europe of Two World Wars, 1914-1949”, Max-Planck-Institut für
Bildungsforschung, Berlin. Paper presented “Light Cavalry: Soviet Musical Films during
the Second World War”
10/11 ‘Between History and Past: Soviet Legacy as the Traumatic Object of Contemporary
Russian Culture’ Workshop at the University of Sheffield Humanities Research Institute.
Paper presented “Between Trauma and Nostalgia: Domestic Photography and Memories
of the Soviet Past.”
11/10 Conference “Cultural Policy and Theater in European Empires. The „Kulturstaat” Austria
in International Comparison” Instituts für Osteuropäische Geschichte Universität Wien.
Paper presented “From Elite Culture to Musical: the Imagery of Bolshoi Theater as a
case-study in Soviet Cultural Policy”
04/10 “Visible presence: Memory, photography and the historical imagination.” An
interdisciplinary symposium at the Oakley Center for Humanities and Social Sciences,
Williams College, Williamstown, MA. Paper presented: “Soviet Past in Amateur
Photography: Events, Evidence, Erasure.”
03/10 Workshop “Opera in Medial Transformation. Performance, Perception and Promotion” at
EUI Florence. Paper presented: “Tunes into Images: Musical Theatre and Cinema in
Dialogue.”
11/09 Roundtable “Soviet Amateur Photography between the Public and the Private” at the
Annual AAASS Convention, Boston, US.
06/09 Roundtable “Musical Markets and Cultural Reception. The Impact of Musical Theatre in
Modern Europe” at Florence EUI. Paper presented “Musical Cinema in the Conflict of
Systems (1930-1960).”
12/08 “Performing Biographies, Memory and the Art of Interpretation” organized by European
Sociological Association, Research Network 3 “Biographical Perspectives on European
6
Societies” in Krakow, Poland. Presentation “Phantom memories. Russian Teenagers,
Family Photography and the Soviet Past.”
09/08 Workshop “Popular National Histories,” European Science Foundation, research
framework “Representations of the Past: The Writing of National Histories in
Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Europe (NHIST)” in Sinaia, Romania. Paper
presented: “Creating a Livable Past: The Triumph of Soviet Everyday Life.”
06/08 “New and Old Frames,” NECS European Network for Cinema Studies at ELTE,
Budapest. Paper presented: “Get to Know Your Country!” Nationalities in Early Soviet
Non-Fiction.
04/08 “Readings on Soviet Culture,” RGGU, Moscow. Paper presented: “Soviet Past in
Amateur Photography: Technologies of Memory and Forgetting” (with Olga
Shevchenko).
01/08 “Digital Formalism. The 'Poetika Vertoviana’ between Archive and Digital,”
Österreichisches Filmmuseum, Vienna. Presentation “Digital Formalism: Ways Forward”
at the closing Round Table.
12/07 Conference Wissen, Kreativität und Transformationen von Gesellschaften, INST, Vienna.
Paper presented: “Building the Past: Archival Footage in Documentary and Fiction
Cinema”
06/06 Workshop “Visions after the Fall: Museums, Archives and Cinema in Reshaping Popular
Perceptions of the Socialist Past” at OSA Archivum, Budapest. Paper presented: “A Pale
Phantom: Motive of Liberation in the Post-Soviet Cinema.”
04/05 Conference “Uses and Abuses of the Middle Ages: 19th-21st Century,” CEU. Paper
presented: “Conquest of the Motherland or We Were Always Here: Middle Ages in
Eastern European Cinema.”
10/04 Workshop at 8th International Documentary Film Festival in Jihlava, Czech Republic.
Workshop title: “ ‘As it really happened…’ Archival footage in documentary and fiction
cinema.”
09/04 Central European Seminar at Czech Cultural Center, Budapest. Presentation titled: “Uses
and Abuses of the Past in Eastern European Cinema.”
10/03 Workshop “Post-communist Condition,” ZKM, Karlsruhe. Paper presented: “Mythology
of Liberation: The Making and Unmaking of the Soviet Empire in Cinema.”
10/03 Symposium “Blick-Gegenblick”, Leipzig Documentary Film Festival. Paper presented:
“East” and “West” on the screen: Taming Geography.
02/03 Soyuz Annual Symposium of Post-Socialist Studies, University of Massachusetts,
Amherst. Paper presented: “From “Unbreakable Union” to “Clash of Civilizations”: The
Transformation of Identity Discourses and the Representations of the Chechen War in
Contemporary Russian Cinema.”
7
10/02 Workshop “Framing the Historian: National, Institutional, and Social Grand Narratives in
East and West” organized by Zentrum für Vergleichende Geschichte Europas/Freie
Universität and CEU, History Department, held in Berlin. Paper presented: “In The
Beginning Was The Word: The Legacy of Semiotics in Cultural Studies in Russia.”
08/02 Conference “The Intelligentsia as Creators of Social Values in Russia and Poland in 19 th
and 20th Centuries,” Lund University. Paper Presented: “Cine-intellectuals vs. cineproletarians: ideologies and visual canons in formation”; introduction for the screening of
New Babylon (1929).
07/02 Guest Lecturer at the Summer Colloquium at Zentrum für Vergleichende Geschichte
Europas/Freie Universität, Berlin. Paper presented: “Life as it is? Debates on Non-Fiction
Film in Weimar Germany and Early-Soviet Russia.”
01/02 Workshop “Nationalism, Transnationalism, and the Balkans,” Huizinga Institute,
Amsterdam. Paper presented: “Others into Us: Constructing Identity in Cinema.”
10/01 Workshop “Changing Historical Studies in Central and Eastern Europe: How Does
Methodological Transfer Generate New Research?” CEU, History Department and
Zentrum für Vergleichende Geschichte Europas/Freie Universität. Paper presented:
“Images of Identity: methodological considerations of research on identity debates and
visual imagery.”
07/01 Special guest at Sabanci University Conference "Texts/Images of History: Representations
and Uses of the Past in Central and Southeast Europe", Istanbul. Public lecture
“Documenting the imaginary past: using history in Eastern European cinema (1920-1989).”
08/00 Conference Visual Evidence VIII, Utrecht University. Paper presented: “Borderlands into
Outskirts: Narrating Difference and Unity in Soviet Cinema."
08/00 Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas (ISSEI-2000),
Bergen University. Paper presented: “Building the Future on the Screen in Early Soviet
Years”
03/00 24th Annual Mid-Atlantic Slavic Conference, Princeton University. Paper presented:
“Edges of Empire: Representations of Borderland Identities in Early Soviet Cinema”
02/00 Specialist Group on Communist and Postcommunist Politics, Annual conference of the
School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London. Paper presented:
“(Un)natural Selection? Aesthetic Alternatives in the Political Context of NEP.”
03/99 The 1999 Annual Conference of the British Association of Slavic and East European
Studies, Cambridge, UK. Paper presented: “National Identity in Contemporary Russian
Cinema”
8
SELECT WORKSHOPS AND CONFERENCES ORGANIZED
2014 "Archive/Image. New Archival Epistemes in the Digital Landscape," OSA Archivum (with
Ioana-Marcrea Toma)
2013 Summer School “Documentary Cinema in Digital Century” (with Peter Almond), Central
European University
2012 Programming Strategies. Workshop for emerging Human Rights Festivals in the Caucuses
(Georgia). With Helena Zajicova
2011 “The Eye and the Other: subjectivity in documentary filmmaking” at Visual Laboratory
at Verzio Documentary Human Rights Film Festival, OSA Archivum
2008 Conference “New and Old Frames” Network of European Cinema Studies (with András
Bálint Kovács, Mats Jönsson, Valérie Morignat, Patrick Vonderau). Hosted by ELTE
University, Budapest.
2007 Workshop “Alternative Images: Documentary as Counter-Culture” (with Olga
Zaslavskaia), OSA Archivum, Budapest.
2006 Workshop “Visions after the Fall: Museums, Archives and Cinema in Reshaping Popular
Perceptions of the Socialist Past,” OSA Archivum, Budapest.
2001 Workshop “Thinking Figuratively: Visual Vocabulary, Historical Narratives, and
Conflicting Identities In 20th Century Europe”, Moscow State University, Sociology
Department (with Olga Shevchenko)
CURATED PROJECTS
05/13
Screening series “Steppe Views? A selection of recent Kyrghiz and Kazakh films”
(with Birgit Beumers), OSA Archivum
5-7/11
Traveling Exhibition “Russian Pioneers of Sound Art and Musical Technology in
1910-1930,” OSA Archivum
12/10
Animation Night at OSA Archivum to commemorate the UN Human Rights Day
11/10
Peter Almond Screening Series, CEU and OSA Archivum
11/10
Visual Lab, Verzio Film Festival, OSA Archivum
03/10
Exposing Terror. Highlights of the Soros Documentary Fund/Sundance
Documentary Film Fund, 1996-2009, OSA Archivum (with Aniko Kovecsi)
LANGUAGES
Native Russian, fluent English and Hungarian, intermediate German, reading knowledge of French
and Ukrainian
9