Film screening and discussion: 900 Days

Jessica Gorter is a Dutch documentary filmmaker. She studied directing and editing at the Dutch Film and Television Academy in Amsterdam. Her films revolve around the tension between personal memories and history at large. They are critically acclaimed for never being unequivocal and characterized by her visual and observing style.

Her films are screened worldwide at film festivals, theatrically released and broadcasted internationally. Gorter made her breakthrough with 900 Days (2011) about the myth and reality of the Leningrad blockade. The film won a.o. the IDFA Award for Best Dutch Documentary, the Prix Interreligieux at Visions du Réel and the special jury prize at ArtDocFest in Moscow. In 2014 Jessica received the prestigious Documentary Award from the Dutch Prince Bernhard Cultural Fund for her work.

Earlier in her career, she made the short poetic documentary Ferryman across the Volga (1997, a.o. Prix de RTBF) and Piter (IFFR, 2004): a captivating look into the lives of seven residents of Saint Petersburg at a turning point in history. In her third feature-length film, The Red Soul (2017), the director investigated why Stalin is still seen as a hero by so many Russians. Her latest documentary, The Dmitriev Affair (2023, a.o. Best Human Rights Film at Verzío FF)) is a thematic continuation of all the films she has made in Russia since the 90s: laying bare the consequences for individual lives of the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

• Opening/Introduction
• Film screening
• Panel discussion moderated by Irina Sandomirskaja

Panellists:

• Jessica Gorter, documentary filmmaker (Amsterdam), explores post-Cold War and post-Soviet Russia in the tension between personal memories and history at large, with a special emphasis on post-Soviet Russia. The author's cinematic anthropology of Russian society nowadays, including the internationally famed The Dmitriev Affair (2023), was recently screened at the European Parliament.
  Her experience of these different worlds, fueled by her passion for photography, forms an important basis for her further work. Her award-winning films are screened worldwide at film festivals and universities, theatrically released and broadcasted internationally.

• Karin Grelz, literary scholar, a specialist in Russian literature and literary translation, translator of Lydia Ginzburg’s Notes from the Blockade (original: Zapiski blokadnogo chelovecka, 1987)
• Malcolm Dixelius, author and TV and radio journalist, correspondent in Moscow in 1979-1984 and 1990-1994; founder of the B2N DOC Baltic to Black Sea Documentary Network connecting documentary filmmakers from East and West.

Moderator:

• Irina Sandomirskaja, professor of cultural studies at Södertörn university, a specialist in Stalinist culture and society and contributor to current international studies of the Siege of Leningrad.