Media Coverage
Oscar endorsement for Women of the Gulag: “To go through such suffering without going mad is a spiritual feat.” (Review)
Author(s): Cynthia Haven
Publication: Stanford University
Date: 12/8/2019
Abstract: Russian American filmmaker Marianna Yarovskaya sent me a short note after she read the earlier Book Haven post on her new film Women of the Gulag, based on the research and book by Paul Gregory. The film is now up for an Oscar next month in the “short documentary” category.
Her email included an endorsement from Vladimir Bukovsky, a Soviet dissident who spent a dozen years in the psychiatric hospitals, prisons and labor camps of the USSR. In December 1976 he was deported from the USSR and exchanged at Zürich airport by the Soviet government for the imprisoned general secretary of the Communist Party of Chile, Luis Corvalán. Bukovsky now lives in the UK.
URL: http://bookhaven.stanford.edu/2019/01/endorsement-for-on-the-oscar-nominated-women-of-the-gulag-to-go-through-such-suffering-without-going-mad-is-a-spiritual-feat/?fbclid=IwAR0GzQomGjV0jqsabcAyB45ywkbLPYIIn-X4NjWlOowJYize0SrNdL-m-ag
Interview: Marianna Yarovskaya’s Short Film ‘Women Of The Gulag’ Shines A Light On Russia’s Forgotten Horrors (Media Coverage)
Author(s): James Prestridge
Publication: Close-up Culture
Date: 12/2/2021
URL: https://closeupculture.com/2019/01/11/interview-marianna-yarovskayas-short-film-women-of-the-gulag-shines-a-light-on-russias-forgotten-horrors/?fbclid=IwAR3VlLVxbcGB1iPNppKfEmTqEfHb42Uj7qS-TEEpYCB9z81umMkDRl_nLH8
Interview: Marianna Yarovskaya and Paul R. Gregory, The John Batchelor Show (Media Coverage)
Author(s): John Batchelor
Publication: Interview: Marianna Yarovskaya and Paul R. Gregory, The John Batchelor Show
Date: 12/3/2021
Abstract: Interview: Marianna Yarovskaya and Paul R. Gregory, The John Batchelor Show
URL: https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-john-batchelor-show/episode/58064685
Interview: Marianna Yarovskaya and Paul R. Gregory, The John Batchelor Show (Media Coverage)
Author(s): John Batchelor
Publication: Interview: Marianna Yarovskaya and Paul R. Gregory, The John Batchelor Show
Date: 12/3/2021
Abstract: Interview: Marianna Yarovskaya and Paul R. Gregory, The John Batchelor Show
URL: https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-john-batchelor-show/episode/58064685
Taboo Subjects Abound In Short Documentaries Contending For Oscars (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Matthew Carey
Publication: Deadline Hollywood
Date: 12/3/2021
Abstract: As the Oscar nomination voting window opens, suspense is building across all the categories including Documentary Short Subject, where 10 films remain in contention. Five will go on to earn Academy Award nominations, which are set to be revealed on January 22.
One of the most compelling documentary shorts of the year, undoubtedly, is Lifeboat, directed by Skye Fitzgerald. He spent time on the Mediterranean Sea documenting an unfolding humanitarian crisis that has seen migrants risk a high probability of death as they flee North Africa in dangerously unsafe vessels.
Among the other shortlisted docs is Black Sheep, the story of Cornelius Walker, a young British man of Nigerian descent who lived in a virulently racist community but somehow became friends with young white people his age, triggering a difficult moral compromise. Women of the Gulag, directed by Marianna Yarovskaya, centers on the memories of several women in their 80s and 90s who were dispatched to Soviet forced labor camp
URL: https://deadline.com/2019/01/taboo-subjects-documentary-shorts-oscar-contenders-1202530849/?fbclid=IwAR0e_-3HC6VodsgcDzQZ8Q-sTJKmEb-6Je8GowfrncJnBfeSQQTvMou2Fwk
Oscar Contender Women of the Gulag Meets its First Troll – A Gulag Denier (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Paul Gregory
Publication: Hoover Digest
Date: 12/23/2021
Abstract: Our documentary film, Women of the Gulag, made the Academy’s short-list of ten documentary films contending for a place in the final five. That Russian-American director, Marianna Yarovskaya, is the first Russian documentary film maker in the history of the Russian Federation to make it so far in Oscar competition has attracted considerable attention in Russian media, especially its liberal sites. It did not take long however before it caught the attention of Russian Gulag deniers. A writer for https://zol-dol.livejournal.com/994442.html viewed the film and concluded that the five female Gulag survivors, telling their story on camera were lying. Such things that they describe – the arbitrary sentences, the beatings, and arrest of innocent fathers and husbands – were made-up fantastic stories. Who could believe that a young woman sleeping in a tent at a freezing logging camp could wake up with a frog in her mouth? Surely viewers will not be taken in by such nonsense. Besides, director Y
URL: http://paulgregorysblog.blogspot.com/2019/01/oscar-contender-women-of-gulag-meets.html
‘Women of the Gulag’ Shortlisted for Oscar Nomination (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Andreas Rossbach
Publication: The Moscow Times
Date: 12/9/2021
Abstract: Why isn’t the Russian film industry happy? It’s complicated.
It’s Oscar time again. On Jan. 22, among the nominations for 2019 awards, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Academy will announce the five short documentary films up for the Oscar. Among the shortlisted films is the documentary “Women of the Gulag” by Russian-American director, Marianna Yarovskaya. It is the first time in the 91 years of the Oscar’s history that a woman director from Russia is so close to getting such prestigious award.
Yarovskaya´s documentary film centers on the memories of six remarkable women survivors of the Gulag. Now in their eighties and nineties, they were sentenced to Soviet forced labor camps during the Stalin era.
But despite the honor, the film has received scant attention in Russia. Only a few Russian media outlets wrote about it, and no Russian official has commented on it publicly.
URL: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/01/21/women-of-the-gulag-shortlisted-for-oscar-nomination-a64223
Will Women of the Gulag get an Oscar next month? Please vote yes. Putin won’t like it. (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Cynthia Haven
Publication: The Book Haven, Cynthia Haven’s Blog, Standford University
Date: 12/9/2021
Abstract: Everyone nowadays is terrified of Russia, talking about Russia, condemning Russia – but comparatively few make any attempt to find out what Russia is really about, culturally, socially, politically. Relatively few make an effort to know its history, other than the comic-book version. Author Paul Gregory, an economist and Russia expert, has gone some way towards alleviating our myopia with Women of the Gulag, teaming up with Russian-American filmmaker Marianna Yarovskaya. We’ve written about the Women of the Gulag here and here and here. (We’ve written about Paul’s book on Nikolai Bukharin here, and his curious and complicated tale of Lenin‘s brain here.) Although he’s one of the movers-and-shakers at the Hoover Institution, he’s had to use public fundraising platforms to get the film made.
URL: http://bookhaven.stanford.edu/2019/01/will-women-of-the-gulag-get-an-oscar-next-month-please-vote-yes-putin-wont-like-it/
Oscar endorsement for Women of the Gulag: “To go through such suffering without going mad is a spiritual feat.” (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Cynthia Haven
Publication: The Book Haven, Cynthia Haven’s Blog, Standford University
Date: 12/9/2021
Abstract: Russian American filmmaker Marianna Yarovskaya sent me a short note after she read the earlier Book Haven post on her new film Women of the Gulag, based on the research and book by Paul Gregory. The film is now up for an Oscar next month in the “short documentary” category.
Her email included an endorsement from Vladimir Bukovsky, a Soviet dissident who spent a dozen years in the psychiatric hospitals, prisons and labor camps of the USSR. In December 1976 he was deported from the USSR and exchanged at Zürich airport by the Soviet government for the imprisoned general secretary of the Communist Party of Chile, Luis Corvalán. Bukovsky now lives in the UK.
URL: http://bookhaven.stanford.edu/2019/01/endorsement-for-on-the-oscar-nominated-women-of-the-gulag-to-go-through-such-suffering-without-going-mad-is-a-spiritual-feat/?fbclid=IwAR0GzQomGjV0jqsabcAyB45ywkbLPYIIn-X4NjWlOowJYize0SrNdL-m-ag
Interview: Marianna Yarovskaya and Talk Radio Europe Host Giles Brown (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Giles Brown
Publication: Radio Europe
Date: 12/9/2021
Abstract: Interview: Marianna Yarovskaya and Talk Radio Europe Host Giles Brown
Stalin Gets Another Hollywood Pass (Media Coverage)
Author(s): By Paul R. Gregory, Hoover Institution
Publication: By Paul R. Gregory, Hoover Institution
Date: 12/9/2021
Abstract: he December 17 Oscar short-listing of Marianna Yarovskaya’s Women of the Gulag in the documentary-short category created a stir in the world-wide Russian intellectual community. Yarovskaya, a dual citizen and a graduate of both Moscow University and USC, is the first Russian woman to be so short-listed since the founding of the Russian Federation. While official Russian media limited coverage to a brief announcement on the Kultura channel, Russia’s small liberal media celebrated.
Hopes for a historic Russian Oscar were elevated when Hollywood’s seven top gurus all predicted nomination. When Women of the Gulag fell short of a nomination, social media redirected to a discussion of Hollywood’s silence on Stalin’s genocides, which are among the worst in modern history. (By “Hollywood,” I mean L.A.’s international film community).
In the sometimes-heated online exchanges that followed, “Andrew” explained Hollywood’s leniency towards Stalin as the choice of the lesser evil—Stalin over Hitl
URL: https://www.hoover.org/research/stalin-gets-another-hollywood-pass
Interview: Marianna Yarovskaya and Paul R. Gregory, The John Batchelor Show (Media Coverage)
Author(s): John Batchelor
Publication: Interview: Marianna Yarovskaya and Paul R. Gregory, The John Batchelor Show
Date: 12/9/2021
Abstract: Interview: Marianna Yarovskaya and Paul R. Gregory, The John Batchelor Show
URL: https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-john-batchelor-show/episode/58064685
Women of the GULAG tell their stories (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Yan Shenkman
Publication: Russia Beyond
Date: 12/10/2021
Abstract: Two years after completing a Kickstarter campaign to fund their documentary Women of the GULAG, director Marianna Yarovskaya and historian Paul Gregory are finalizing the shooting of the film.
The project grew out of Gregory’s seminar on totalitarian regimes at Stanford University, where he is a fellow at the Hoover Institution. Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation, which conducts interview with the last Holocaust survivors, was discussed as part of the seminar, which gave Yarovskaya, an American of Russian descent, the idea of filming GULAG survivors.
URL: https://www.rbth.com/arts/2014/07/22/women_of_the_gulag_tell_their_stories_37043
The Stories of Six Women as Last Survivors of the Gulag (Review)
Author(s): Judith Pallot, Emeritus Professor, University of Oxford
Publication: University of Oxford, kinokultura.com
Date: 12/10/2021
Abstract: The stories these women tell could just as well have been told by any number of the women in Stalin’s Russia who ended up in the Gulag. Some fared better than the women here, others did considerably worse, and many died. None who survived, I suspect, will have been able to leave the experience behind them. We are fortunate that Fekla, Vera, Nadezhda, Elena, Ksenia and Adile subsequently dedicated their life to letting it be known what happened to them and recounting the atrocities they witnessed. Marianna Yarovskaya has now fashioned these women’s stories into a fifty-minute incontrovertible indictment of Russia’s failure to face up to its past.
URL: http://www.kinokultura.com/2019/65r-gulag-women.shtml
The Stories of Six Women as Last Survivors of the Gulag (Review)
Author(s): Carmen Gray
Publication: Modern Times Review, The European Documentary Magazine
Date: 12/22/2021
Abstract: Modern Times Review, The European Documentary Magazine
Women of the Gulag bears witness through eye-witness testimony of the female experience of Stalinist repression. Also subject to back-breaking labour, women were under increased threat of rape, and some bore children inside the camps. Six women — Vera, Ksenia, Elena, Fekla, Nadezhda, and Adile — who are in their eighties and nineties recount their experiences. Now in their last days (all but one died shortly after their interviews), they speak with little hesitation, seeming eager to have their stories heard; the truth of their ordeals recorded, indelible.
URL: https://www.moderntimes.review/one-learning-the-other-forgetting/
Academy Awards: Final Oscar Predictions in All Categories (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Kristopher Tapley
Publication: Variety
Date: 12/30/2021
Abstract: Nominations for the 91st Academy Awards will be announced on Tuesday, Jan. 22. Below are In Contention’s final predictions in all 24 categories. Bradley Cooper’s “A Star Is Born” and Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma” lead the way with 10 expected nominations apiece, while we forecast eight for Yorgos Lanthimos’ “The Favourite” and seven each for Damien Chazelle’s ‘First Man” and Adam McKay’s “Vice.”
Documentary (Short Subject):
“End Game”, Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman, Rebekah Fergusson and William Hirsch
“My Dead Dad’s Porno Tapes”, Charlie Tyrell and Julie Baldassi
“Period. End of Sentence.”, Rayka Zehtabchi, Melissa Berton, Lisa Taback and Garrett K. Schiff
“Women of the Gulag”, Marianna Yarovskaya and Paul R. Gregory
“Zion”, Floyd Russ and Carter Collins
URL: Nominations for the 91st Academy Awards will be announced on Tuesday, Jan. 22. Below are In Contention’s final predictions in all 24 categories. Bradley Cooper’s “A Star Is Born” and Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma” lead the way with 10 expected nominations apiece, while we forecast eight for Yorgos Lanthimos’ “The Favourite” and seven each for Damien Chazelle’s ‘First Man” and Adam McKay’s “Vice.” Documentary (Short Subject): “End Game”, Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman, Rebekah Fergusson and William Hirs
‘Women of the Gulag’ tells five astonishing stories of survival (Review)
Author(s): Jared Feldschreiber
Publication: Kyiv Post
Date: 12/24/2021
Abstract: The Gulag, the system of concentration camps through which the Soviet Union carried out murderous political repression, is something many Russians and Ukrainians would rather forget.
But while the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin is encouraging Russia’s public amnesia about the Gulag, which reached its worst excesses under Joseph Stalin, the savage Soviet dictator currently undergoing rehabilitation by the Kremlin, in both Russia and Ukraine, memories of the Gulag are also simply dying of old age.
That’s why films like “Women of the Gulag,” a 2018 documentary film directed by Russian-American Marianna Yarovskaya, which is in the running for an Oscar this year in the Best Documentary Short category, are so important in documenting the grim reality of the totalitarian Soviet system. An announcement on whether the documentary has been selected as an official nominee will be made on Jan. 21.
URL: https://www.kyivpost.com/lifestyle/women-of-the-gulag-tells-astonishing-stories-of-survival.html?fbclid=IwAR2-r48-zz829YJ39F4dSYdOHNtumrQF8F9y_NEUv10kPt_q5KrkPCuEli8&cn-reloaded=1
2019 Oscar Nomination Predictions: Our Final Selections, Ranked for Each Category (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Anne Thompson
Publication: Indie Wire
Date: 12/2/2021
Abstract: Best Documentary Short:
“Zion”
“Black Sheep”
“Women of the Gulag”
“End Game”
“Period. End of Sentence.”
What’s Jewish On The Oscars Small Categories Short List (Media Coverage)
Author(s): By PJ Grisar,
Publication: Forward
Date: 12/17/2021
Abstract: On December 18 The Academy Awards announced its shortlist for some of the ceremony’s smaller categories.
Jews are well represented in the Best Documentary Feature category. Betsy West and Julie Cohen’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg film “RBG” made the list alongside Tim Wardle’s “Three Identical Strangers,” which told the bombshell story of Jewish triplets separated at birth. Also in the running is Alexandria Bombach’s “On Her Shoulders” which tells the story of Nadia Murad, a survivor of sexual slavery under ISIS after the terrorist organization’s genocide of the Yazidi people.
The Best Documentary Short category shortlisted Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s “End Game,” which looks at healthcare for the terminally ill; Marshall Curry’s“A Night at the Garden,” which examines a 1939 Nazi rally held at Madison Square Garden; Gordon Quinn’s “’63 Boycott,” about students who boycotted Chicago public schools that supported segregation; and “Women in the Gulag” by director Marianna Yarovskaya.
URL: https://forward.com/culture/film-tv/416243/whats-jewish-on-the-oscars-small-categories-short-list/
Hoover-Based Film Documentary Under Oscar Consideration (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Paul Gregory
Publication: Stanford University
Date: 12/9/2021
Abstract: Women of the Gulag, a new film documentary based on Hoover Institution scholar Paul Gregory’s book by that name, is among the ten films on the Oscar awards’ short list for “documentary (short subject).” The film is directed by Russian-American film maker Marianna Yarovskaya of Mayfilms and produced by her and Gregory.
On Dec. 17, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced shortlists of semi-finalists in nine separate categories. Voting begins Jan. 7 and the nominees will be announced along with all other Oscar categories on Jan. 22. Presentation of the winners will be Feb. 24.
URL: https://www.hoover.org/news/hoover-based-film-documentary-under-oscar-consideration
And then there were 10: Academy cuts documentary short contenders to select few (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Matthew Carey
Publication: NonFictionFilm
Date: 12/2/2021
Abstract: Marshall Curry’s A Night at the Garden, and films from The Guardian Docs and New York Times Op-Docs make shortlist.
Joining Curry’s film on the shortlist is another documentary with historical dimensions. Women of the Gulag, directed by Marianna Yoravskaya. It centers on the memories of several women in their 80s and 90s who were dispatched to Soviet forced labor camps decades earlier, during the Stalin era. Millions of people, including hundreds of thousands of political prisoners, were confined in the camps and countless numbers perished under brutal conditions.
“Our ‘last witness’s’ stories range from the horrific to the uplifting,” the director writes. “Conservatory student, Vera, [was] arrested for playing ‘German hymns’…Ksenia live[d] in a pit covered by branches…For most, the telling of their stories was cathartic. Adile, in her 90s, put it this way: ‘I lived so long to be able to finally tell the truth.'”
URL: https://www.nonfictionfilm.com/news/and-then-there-were-10-academy-cuts-documentary-short-contenders-to-select-few
Soviet Gender Equality and Women of the Gulag (Review)
Author(s): Chelsea Follett
Publication: CATO Institute
Date: 12/22/2021
Abstract: Many hoped the Bolshevik Revolution one hundred years ago would usher in a new era of gender and class equality. Following the revolution, Soviet Russia declared “International Women’s Day” an official holiday, and “Marxist feminists” romanticize communism to this day. Women of the Gulag, both a remarkable book and a documentary film, highlights the disparity between the Soviet Union’s alleged gender equality and the reality of life for women under communism.
URL: https://www.cato.org/commentary/soviet-gender-equality-women-gulag
A Look in the Mirror: A Conversation with Marianna Yarovskaya about “Women of the Gulag” (Review)
Author(s): Lydia Roberts
Publication: Los Angeles Review of Books interviews Marianna Yarovskaya
Date: 12/10/2021
Abstract: Marianna Yarovskaya’s latest documentary, Women of the Gulag, opens with members of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation placing flowers on Stalin’s grave and proudly taking photos of themselves in front of the bust that stands above it. In contemporary Russia, it seems, there will always be flowers on Stalin’s grave, and, according to a recent article by Daria Khlevniuk, there is an increasing number of unofficial monuments dedicated to him. Along with his presence in physical space, Khlevniuk points out, Stalin has a large, and increasing, presence online in various social media groups dedicated to defending his legacy.
URL: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-look-in-the-mirror-a-conversation-with-marianna-yarovskaya-about-women-of-the-gulag/?fbclid=IwAR3ftnMl4z-KMTH-G5jd5SFtK4Fk9mEypelcBOtJSebdzZ9OCMKHY_V9cn4#!
Women of the Gulag: A Last Chance (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Mark Harrison
Publication: Warwick Blogs
Date: 12/9/2021
Abstract: My Hoover colleague and co-author Paul Gregory is involved in a remarkable project: to bring to life the stories of women who survived life in Stalin’s Gulag. His book, Women of the Gulag: Portraits of Five Remarkable Lives, recounts their fates. As a historian, Paul began his research from documentary records of the survivors. He went on to track them down. The result is a beautiful and touching feature film by Marianna Yarovskaya.
URL: https://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/markharrison/entry/women_of_the
Associated Products
Women of the Gulag (Film/TV/Video Broadcast or Recording)Title: Women of the Gulag
Writer: Marianna Yarovskaya
Director: Marianna Yarovskaya
Producer: Marianna Yarovskaya
Producer: Paul R Gregory
Producer: Mitchell W Block
Producer: Mark Jonathan Harris
Abstract: Events
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Online/Virtual Event Guide
Virtual Screening and Director Q&A: 'Women of the Gulag'
Monday, Nov 22, 2021 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Location
Online/Virtual Event
via Zoom.
Join us for a virtual screening of Women of the Gulag and Q&A with director Marianna Yarovskaya. This film features six women as they go about their lives and reflect on their time in Stalin's camps.
Click here to register for the Zoom event.
Join us for a screening of "Women of the Gulag" and Q&A with director Marianna Yarovskaya.
"Women of the Gulag" tells the compelling stories of several female labor camp survivors. While Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago largely recounts the experiences of the men caught in Stalin’s camps, Marianna Yarovskaya’s 2019 Oscar shortlisted documentary film features six women in their 80s and 90s as they go about their daily lives and reflect on their experiences. Their accounts range from the horrific to the uplifting. The film also juxtaposes the troubling resurgence of praise for Stalin with the fight to preserve and disseminate the memory of Soviet repressions, terror, and displacement.
Year: 2019
Primary URL:
http://womenofthegulag.comSecondary URL:
http://mayfilms.comFormat: Film
Prizes
Audience Award
Date: 1/1/2019
Organization: EBS International Documentary Film Festival South Korea
Abstract: n/a
Critic's Award Internatinoal Selection
Date: 1/1/2019
Organization: Hong Kong International Documentary Film Festival
Audience Award
Date: 1/1/2019
Organization: Vyborg Film Festival
Special Jury Prize
Date: 1/1/2019
Organization: Vyborg Film Festival
Best Documentary Short
Date: 1/1/2019
Organization: Reykjavik Film Festival
Best Documentary Film
Date: 1/1/2019
Organization: ECU Documentary Film Festival
Best Editing
Date: 1/1/2019
Organization: Jeffeson State FLIXX Festival
Grand Festival Award - Best Documentary
Date: 1/1/2019
Organization: Berkeley Documentary Film Festival
Special Diploma
Date: 1/1/2019
Organization: Russia Abroad Festival
Best International Documentary Film
Date: 1/1/2019
Organization: Riffa Regina International Film Festival, Canada
Best Feature Documentary
Date: 1/1/2019
Organization: hanging Face International Film Festival, 2019
Finalist, Best Documentary
Date: 1/1/2019
Organization: Near Nazareth Festival
Best Director
Date: 1/1/2019
Organization: 8th Social Impact Media Awards (SIMA)
Outstanding Achievement
Date: 1/1/2019
Organization: Accolade Global Film Competition 2019 Humanitarian Awards
Best Documentary Film
Date: 1/1/2019
Organization: Dalmatia Film Festival (DFF) 2019
Best Documentary Short shortlist nominee
Date: 1/1/2019
Organization: Academy Awards 2018