Film screening and conversation: “Luybov – Love in Russian”

Still from the shooting of “Lyubov – love in Russian”. Photo: Majaq Julén Brännström.

For several years, Nobel Prize laureate Svetlana Alexievich investigated Russian people’s relationship to love, which she means is an acute shortage in today’s society. Alexievich is one of the authors who has long since clearly taken a stand against both Putin and Lukashenko. Documentary film director Staffan Julén followed her work and together they depict a process driven by equal parts of political, artistic and humanistic forces.

The film is 1 h 29 mins long.

Free admission. No booking required.

The film will be screened in Accelerator’s seminar room. The conversation will take place in Accelerator’s café.

The gender seminar in literature

The film screening is part of the gender seminar in literature at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics, at Stockholm University. The seminar is arranged twice a year, frequently with invited guests, and with a chance to discuss new research within the field.

Bios

Staffan Julén (b. 1957) has directed, written and produced a number of internationally award-winning feature-length documentaries and shorter films. Feature-length documentaries include LYUBOV – kärlek på ryska, 2017, together with Svetlana Aleksijevitj, My Heart of Darkness, 2010, The Prize of the Pole, 2007, and Inughuit – the people at the navel of the earth, 1987. Since 2018, Julén has been working on an artistic research project financed by Swedish Research Council: ”’Documentaries are the Biggest Lies of All’ – What Does Subjective Documentary Language Mean in the Era of Post-Truth?” This project will be finalized in the fall of 2022 at Liljevalchs Konsthall with an exhibition about presentation and selection, as well as a two-volume book project. His new documentary Kärlek på svenska will be screened on SVT on April 28, 2022.

Svetlana Alexievich (b. 1948) is a Belarusian journalist and writer who has covered several dramatic events in Soviet history: the Second World War, Afghan War, dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the Chernobyl disaster. Her books are based on interviews and interviews. 2015 Alexievich was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time”.

Frida Beckman is Professor of Literature. Her main field of research is American literature and culture from the Second World War to the present. Beckman is also engaged with a broad spectrum of critical theory and with the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. She is director of literary research at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics. Frida Beckman is host for the podcast Studio Anekdot.