My Perestroika: movie review

( Unrated ) ( Monitor Movie Guide )

As the USSR collapses, ‘My Perestroika’ follows its upheaval on five Russian children coming of age.

|
Red Square Productions
Young Pioneers, Moscow, 1977, in a scene from ‘My Perestroika.’

What was it like for a generation of Soviet schoolchildren to confront the brave new post-Soviet world? Director Robin Hessman, who lived as a film student in Moscow in the 1990s and later was a producer on the Russian "Sesame Street," spent five years recording the lives of five Moscow schoolmates from the last Iron Curtain generation as they passed through glasnost and perestroika and emerged, in various states of disillusion, on the other side.

In some ways, especially in its use of then-and-now home-movie footage and period newsreels, her documentary "My Perestroika" is a companion piece to Michael Apted's "Up" series.

Olga is a single mother working for a billiard table rental company; Ruslan, once a punk rock icon, became fed up with the commercialization of the music business and now plays for spare change in the subways; Andrei, who still regards himself as anti-establishment, runs a chain of high-end menswear stores.

Perhaps most fascinating of all are Borya and Lyuba, married public school history teachers. They had to undo years of indoctrination only to discover that, in the Putin-Medvedev era, the new history textbooks are once again expunging the "bad stuff." (There is a saying that in Russia, it is the past that is unpredictable.)

The openness of these people is often astonishing – and a sign of hope. Lyuba says that Stalin may no longer be championed in Russia but that Lenin, who is still revered, "was just as much of a cannibal."

Borya says that no matter how revisionist the current chronicles of history, his young son is part of a generation that can get around any firewall. "With the Internet," Borya says, "it's impossible to have a monopoly on information." Grade: B+ (Unrated. In Russian, with subtitles.)

To receive Monitor recipes weekly sign-up here!

You've read 3 of 3 free articles. Subscribe to continue.
QR Code to My Perestroika: movie review
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Movies/2011/0415/My-Perestroika-movie-review
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe
CSM logo

Why is Christian Science in our name?

Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The Christian Science Church, and we’ve always been transparent about that.

The Church publishes the Monitor because it sees good journalism as vital to progress in the world. Since 1908, we’ve aimed “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind,” as our founder, Mary Baker Eddy, put it.

Here, you’ll find award-winning journalism not driven by commercial influences – a news organization that takes seriously its mission to uplift the world by seeking solutions and finding reasons for credible hope.

Explore values journalism About us