The Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) warmly invites you to the Film Seminar on Oleksiy Radynski´s film Infinity According to Florian (2022)

The seminar consists in a short introductory lecture, followed by the screening of the film Infinity According to Florian, and a general discussion afterwards.

Speaker: Ana Hedberg Olenina, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Media Studies at Arizona State University

Special guest: Oleksiy Radynski, award-winning filmmaker, director and writer of the film Infinity According to Florian (2022)

The event is held on-site only and it is open to participants with affiliation to a university/college.

Infinity According to Florian (2022) delves into the story of the Ukrainian architect Florian Yuriev and his fight to give a second life to the outstanding avant-garde building known as “the flying saucer”, which he conceived and built for the Institute of Information in Kyiv, when his own life was about to end. (Synopsis source: Kumu Documentary External link, opens in new window.)
The film received several award nominations, and won the Kinokolo Best Ukrainian Documentary Award from the Union of Ukrainian Film Critics.

Oleksiy Radynski is an award-winning filmmaker based in Kyiv. His films are often described as being at the intersection of documentary and political cinema, and have been screened worldwide. Radynski´s filmography includes, among others: Integration (2014), Landslide (2016), Facade Colour: Blue (2019), Circulation (2020), Infinity According to Florian (2022), Chornobyl 22 (2023), Where Russia Ends (2024), Special Operation (2025). Among other awards, Radynski received the Grand-Prix of the Ukranian National Competition at the Kyiv IFF for several of his films, the Grand-Prix at the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival for Chornobyl 22, and the Kinokolo Best Ukrainian Documentary Award from the Union of Ukrainian Film Critics for Infinity According to Florian.

Ana Hedberg Olenina is an Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Media Studies at Arizona State University. She specializes in the Soviet Avant-garde, while her broader research interests include media theory and the history of psychology. Her first book, Psychomotor Aesthetics: Movement and Affect in Modern Literature and Film (Oxford UP 2020), explored conceptions of expressive movement and empathy in early 20th-century psychology, silent cinema and oral performance of poetry. This study was awarded the ASEEES Vucinich book prize and AATSEEL Best First Book Prize. She has recently edited a special issue of the Slavic and Eastern European Journal on Ukrainian cinema. Olenina's articles on the notion of gesture and embodiment, neurocognitive approaches in film studies, Russian Formalism, modern dance, and Soviet avant-garde cinema have appeared in journals such as Discourse, Film History, Apparatus, Kinovedcheskie Zapiski and several anthologies.