Russian Style from Evelina Khromtchenko – on fashion choices that are uniquely Russian
Evelina Khromtchenko, the author of a new book that dissects what constitutes Russian style, is the No.1 fashion guru in Russia as voted by many. So, when she published her book defining what Russian style is, many people in Russia and abroad were eager to get a copy.
- Photo by Flickr User Max Chernitsov
Khromtchenko is the editor-in-chief of the Russian edition of a popular fashion magazine L’Officiel. In addition to managing one of the top fashion publications in Russia, Khromtchenko does a myriad of other things – she co-hosts a daily TV fashion show, attends top fashion weeks around the world, and even voices over in movies (she voiced over Meryl Streep’s character in the Russian version of Devil Wears Prada). From all that I have been reading and hearing about Evelina, I came to admire her incredible work ethic and professionalism. And, while I don’t always agree with what she has to say, the way she says it is always very commanding.
So, naturally, when I found out that Khromtchenko’s latest book – Russian Style was available at a local book store, I promised myself to check it out. And, here is what I thought of Khromtchenko’s work - in her book, Khromtchenko is on a mission that is very similar to what I am striving to achieve with this blog – i.e.: making sense of Russia for people who are curious... Evelina’s book is pretty much an encyclopedia of things that define the style that is uniquely Russian. What I thought was cool is that she named chapters in her book – Catherine the Great, Caviar, Maria Sharapova, Baboushka, Leo Tolstoy, Anastasia, Tovarisch, Lolita, etc, covering most of the stylistic, cultural and historic directions in Russian fashion. And, although some of the things she covered might have seemed common sense to me, to most North Americans they might be news. I have to say that the photos in the book are probably the funnest part – which (almost) justified spending $40 on buying this book. To me, the book is a bit overpriced, even though the quality, visuals and content are definitely there (the book is available online for $40, but regular book stores sell it for as much as $60). All in all, this book is quite an entertaining and glamorous read!
Russia’s National Soccer Team Does Not Advance Into The 2010 World Cup Finals – National Calamity?
Image by Flickr user Natahen
Today, the Russian national soccer squad lost in the second leg of the qualifiers for the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa. The team lost to Slovenia -- 0-1. This means the Russian team will not be going to the World Cup championships in June of next year. And, it is something that still has not quite sunk in for many soccer fans back in Russia. The Russian-language sports channels are discussing nothing but soccer, analyzing every move that the Russian players made in that match to try to understand where the things went wrong. But, the general atmosphere is that of disbelief and confusion.
Now, soccer was always a big thing in Russia. And, I mean BIG. However, in the decade following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the level of soccer in Russia has subsided to well below average. But, the love for the beautiful game has been resurrected after a strong showing of the team at the 2008 European Championships. Out of nowhere, Russia advanced from the group stage, past the Netherlands and into the semifinals to wind up with a bronze medal in the end.
Ever since, soccer has been the nation’s obsession. Now, as Russia was trying to make it into the 2010 World Cup, the entire country was holding its breath before Wednesday’s game with Slovenians. Russians won the first game on home turf in Moscow - 2:1 last Saturday, but the victory meant nothing until the second and final match in Slovenia. But, the stars just were not aligned for the Russian team today – with two red cards, a messed up player formation and sub par fitness levels, there was little that the team and the head coach Guus Hiddink could really do.
In any case, I am already looking forward to the World Cup championships in South Africa next summer, albeit I will have one less team to cheer for.
What Is In An Email? Medvedev Addresses Federal Assembly, Writes His Speech Based On People’s Emails
I have recently blogged about the Internet prowess of Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev – I was talking about how he has a blog where he regularly posts messages, addressing the citizens of Russia on day-to-day issues. Well, last Friday Medvedev gave his annual speech to the Federal Assembly. And, according to Kremlin, his speech was based on emails sent by regular people from all over the country.
The Federal Assembly address is a speech that the President of Russia gives every year to talk about things that worked in the previous year and the things that did not. The interesting thing about this year’s address is that one month prior to giving his speech, Medvedev wrote an article for an influential online newspaper called Gazeta.ru in which he asked Russians to send emails to kremlin@gov.ru suggesting topics for him to discuss during his address. The call for emails was an interesting twist on the annual address. In any case, it definitely did not go unnoticed. Medvedev’s article in Gazeta.ru now has almost 2,600 online comments - some of them supportive, some curious, some downright incredulous of the whole thing. Unfortunately, Medvedev never disclosed which of the issues that he raised during his November 13th address came straight from people’s emails, but it was interesting to see Medvedev pushing for more public dialogue to take place.
I was thinking about Canada in this respect too, wondering if I would be willing to email Stephen Harper to give him ideas of things to talk about in his speeches. I think here in North America we are so used to politics being a public matter that if you fire your PM an email, it might be looked upon by your friends ands colleagues as being over enthusiastic and keen, and just not a very cool thing to do.
But, what about you? Would you send an email to the leader of your country if you had a chance? Do you think it would reach the destination and serve its purpose, or would it be a waste of your time?
The Creator Of Kalashnikov AK-47 Rifle Turns 90: One Of A Kind Life Story
The infamous AK-47 rifle, a creation of the Soviet inventor Mikhail Kalashnikov, has turned military thinking on its head. Light and unpretentious, yet effective and reliable, AK-47 has firmly established itself as a key weapon in the arsenals of over 100 different countries. But who was the man behind the notorious AK-47?
By now, Kalashnikov’s name has become a brand and an unofficial symbol of Russia. Many people still think Kalashnikov is the name of a military lab, not someone’s last name. It gives me shivers to think how many people have been killed with AK-47 over the years, but the life story of its creator -- Mikhail Kalashnikov is something that has always fascinated me. In a sense, he is the embodiment of the Soviet dream, which in analogy to the American dream, saw him rise from rags to riches. The seventeenth child in his family and a high school dropout, he achieved the popularity of an inventor of the most commonly used weapon in the world. And, it is his incredible life story that makes many Russians take personal pride in his invention.
His name was officially declassified only fifteen years ago and it was than that the world first saw a human face behind the powerful AK-47. Kalashnikov created his weapon in the trenches of World War II as a sergeant with virtually no technical background. But, his creation saw him rise in military ranks to general-lieutenant and earned him a Ph.D. in technical studies.
But, Kalashnikov is not your typical weapons designer. At 5 feet 3, Kalashnikov wrote poetry and says he would have become a writer if it was not for the War. He says he never profited from the sales of his rifle and always wished he would have rather invented a lawnmower…
And, at 90, he keeps on plugging away at his test lab in Izhevsk, getting up every morning to get to work and tickle his inventor’s bone. For his 90th birthday, President Dmitri Medvedev bestowed Russia’s highest honourary title upon Kalashnikov, the man who is one of the few remaining walking legends that modern Russia has inherited.
The Fall Of The Berlin Wall And Russia’s Image Abroad
On the day of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, many are asking what the fall of the Berlin Wall really meant for Russia and the rest of the world. I was three years old at the time when the Wall came down, but as I grew up to know the fall of the Berlin Wall was supposed to mean the end of the old ways things used to be: a beginning of new Russia – more liberal and free thinking. But, did the fall of the Berlin Wall really have any effect on how Russia is being perceived abroad? Has its international image improved, stayed the same or worsened ever since that Wall came down?
I was randomly browsing the English website of the Russian news agency RIA Novovsti, when I came across a little survey banner, prompting users to take a poll on what Russia’s image abroad is -- 44.5% of the respondents said “mostly good”, 33% said “mostly bad” and 22.5% said “unclear.” Given that the poll was done in English, I presume people of all the different backgrounds took the survey. So, I found it interesting that the respondents were somewhat split on what Russia’s image abroad was. I definitely think that the poll reflects the general confusion about Russia in the world today. But perhaps, as a young democracy of less than 20 years, it is only now reaching the maturity level required to start doing some serious self-reflection. And, when it will itself figure out how it wants to be perceived, perhaps everyone else will have an easier time understanding it too.
The President Of Russia Is A Blogger: But Is He The Only National Leader Out There Who Blogs?
Of all the people on Earth, the last person I would expect to blog would be the President of Russia. Why? Because history has it that the leaders of Russia have never been known to be flexible thinkers, which imho is a "must" to be a blogger. Would not ya all agree, my fellow bloggers?
And yet, President Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev does keep a blog – and from the looks of it, he blogs with a certain degree of interest and even enthusiasm. It looks like Medvedev’s blog is not just another promotional “about me” page put together by a bunch of government PR people. I can usually sense when a person actually spends some time on their blog and takes time to read the comments to revise their content accordingly. And, I can say Medvedev’s blog is not just a barrage of unconnected and wordy posts. Medvedev also seems to have a knack for videoblogging. Sometimes, he just seems to get that old webcam going, and records video messages for his online audience.
Russia’s TV Channel One reported just recently that the number of comments on Medvedev’s blog is approaching 110,000! In his video entry devoted to the one year anniversary of his blog’s existence (see below), Medvedev notes that he takes time to read all of the comments, saying he likes the fact that people do not just complain to him, but also offer viable solutions to some of the problems. He said he hoped that people would eventually stop thinking that blogging in not a "President's thing to do."
Medvedev can even be found on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/ru_medvedev
Oh, and he uses a Mac. So, PC people, shriek!
But, is Mr. Medvedev the only political leader out there who blogs or engages in the social media one way or another?
Well, you would be surprised. Here is a list of political leaders who tapped their feet into the unfamiliar social media waters:
- the controversial President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used to blog here http://www.ahmadinejad.ir/ but his last post dates to December 2007
- Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is big on blogging and is all-in-all quite a media type. He currently blogs here http://blog.planalto.gov.br/. What is more, de Silva hosts his own radio show - Café com o Presidente
- Australia’s Kevin Rudd blogs here http://www.kevinpm.com.au/
- Shimon Perez of Israel is here http://www.haaretz.com/peres
- British PM Gordon Brown can be found here http://gordon-brown.blogspot.com/ (**authenticity questionable)
- Queen Elizabeth II of the U.K. has a YouTube channel of her own -- The Royal Channel, offering some relatively fresh content and boasting over 2 million views
- Well, Queen Elizabeth is certainly not the only one with YouTube ambitions. The Vatican also has a channel with one million channel views
- Portuguese president Aníbal Cavaco Silva is on Twitter at http://twitter.com/presidencia
- Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has a radio show of his own -- Alo Presidente has produced a whopping 341 episodes
- Now, Queen Rania, the queen of Jordan, gets the #1 media guru title from me. She is all over platforms. She has a YouTube channel, a website and a Twitter account -- all of which seem to be rather current and worth a read.
What was really surprising to me is that some of the key political leaders are nowhere to be found on the Web. No Sarkozy, no Obama, no Merkel blogging or Tweeting. Instead, politicians with more-or-less visible web presence are in charge of the countries that are far from being political powerhouses on the international arena. Mr. Medvedev seems to be one of the few exceptions...
**Big thanks to my friend Luiz Brandao Jr for helping me assemble all this info.
Digital Brothers Karamazov? Russian Theatre Moves To The Web
Just over a week ago, Russia held its sixth annual Web Theatre Festival. The performances were available to watch in HD on http://www.cultu.ru/. The festival featured a lot of experimental theatre with many hip, modern artists also in the loop. What is interesting is that festival’s online audience nearly doubled in 2008, but, to me, the idea of holding an online theatre festival in Russia felt a bit strange. And, to understand why, you have to understand what theatre means for Russians as a genre.
Theatre has always been more of an experience than art in Russia. It has always been a place where you could leave all your daily problems behind and get carried away by what was happening on the stage. Going to the theatre has a lot of tradition associated with it: people dress up, it is a good place to go on a first date, it is a place to network, etc. The idea is that theatre in Russia has always been a physical, direct experience whereby to really feel it, you need to be in the theatre to see an actor’s eyes…
That is why hearing that web theatre thrives in Russia is a bit odd to me. In a country where going to the theatre is almost a ritual, it is weird to have people turn to the Internet for it. I would imagine people with no access to major theatres in Russian periphery are the ones driving online traffic for the festival, because the hubs of theatre in Russia have always been Moscow and St. Petersburg. Another large demographics that gets drawn in are likely Russian ex-pats -- Cultu.ru reports Internet users from 80 different countries checked out some of the online performances throughout the festival.
Vancouver International Film Festival 2009 – Russian flicks Morphia and A Room And A Half – REVIEW AND PHOTO REPORT! PART II
A Room and a Half, or a Sentimental Journey to the Homeland (2008)
Director: Andrey Khrzhanovsky
I was watching A Room and A Half the day after watching Morphia – and, it was quite a dramatic change from one movie to another. After the gloom and doom of Morphia, A Room and A Half felt like a breeze – fun, electric, humane, and sometimes really awkward.
The movie is a fantasy, radically different from the hyper-realistic Morphia. It centers on the return of a famous Russian poet and Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky from exile in the United States back to Russia, except Brodsky never actually returned to Russia. But, the movie director Khrzhanovsky asks, “what if…?” Brodsky was a political outcast, a prophet whom the Soviet government tried to belittle and ridicule to the point that he decided to leave the country.
A couple of Brodsky’s quotes mentioned in the movie really got me to think deep: at one point, he says, “mass culture does not exist; an artist is ‘one and only’ by definition.” I felt that this pillar upon which Brodsky’s life work stood is not just a relic of the Soviet era, but could not be more pertinent here in North America nowadays. The balloon boy story underscored people’s desire for mass entertainment, mass attention, and mass coverage. But, does that desire annihilate that ‘one and only’ artist that Brodsky is talking about?
In any case, this movie is not really about politics. It is about the torment of a man separated from his hometown and family by the exile. Brodksy’s nostalgia and longing to see his parents beautifully portrayed by Alisa Freinlich and Sergei Yursky is really what the movie is all about.
The movie director has a background in animation and it showed! Occasional interjections of cartoons did a good job of emphasizing the absurdity of the plot.
The only problem I found with this movie was its length. Unlike during Morphia’s screening where everybody was glued to their seats, during the screening of A Room and a Half, I saw people leave hours before the movie was over. To me, some of the scenes were unnecessarily long. Other that, I give this movie a definite pass!
Vancouver International Film Festival 2009 – Russian flicks Morphia and A Room And A Half – REVIEW AND PHOTO REPORT! PART I
At this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival, two Russian movies have been showcased. Sure enough I could not miss an opportunity to take a peek at this year’s lineup. And, although the festival wrapped up on over two week ago, I could not help but post this anyway. So, here is my review of both movies. Spoiler alert for those of you who still want to watch them!
Morphia (2008)
Director: Aleksei Balabanov
To sum it up in one sentence: Morphia takes guts to watch in full. The cinematography is superb, but the movie is so brutally and painfully realistic that I felt physically sick a couple of times while watching it, and here is why…
The movie tells the story of a young doctor who becomes addicted to morphine. The script is based on a short story series (The Notes Of A Young Doctor) written by a famous Russian novelist Mikhail Bulgakov. I was thrilled when I found that out because I’ve read the series a long time ago, and I remember how much impact the book had on me. It was not the gloomy Bulgakov that the world would come to know eventually. The way Bulgakov tells these semi-autobiographical stories is actually quite ‘digestible.’ But, the ending of the story about Dr. Mikhail Polyakov, the center figure in Morphia, blurred out of my mind, so before going to see the movie, I did not really remember the details of what was going to happen. And, boy, was I on a nerve string when I was watching that movie… Following the mind of a drug addict who has people’s lives in his hands can get emotionally exhausting!
Another interesting aspect of the production is that Sergei Bodrov Jr. wrote the adapted script for the movie. Bodrov Jr.’s father is a famous Russian movie director living in the United States. But, Bodrov Jr. has his own claim to fame. He started out acting and became famous for his roles in Brat (Brother) and Brat-2 (Brother-2) also directed by Balabanov, which became iconic for the accurate depiction of the bloody 90’s in Russia. Later, Bodrov Jr. ventured into film directing. Tragically, in 2005, while shooting his movie in the Karmadon Gorge in North Ossetia, Bodrov Jr. and his crew were caught in the rockslide. The search for Bordov Jr. and his crew lasted for days, but turned up nothing. Bodrov Jr. was 31. But, nonetheless, his work lives on, and it is great to see his script being used by such great master as Morphia’s director Aleksei Balabanov.
Balabanov is behind Of Freaks and Men (shot entirely in sepia), Cargo 200 (Gruz 200, on the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan), War (Voina, on Chechen conflict with Russia) and of course Brat with Bodrov Jr. in the leading role. Balabanov’s Morphia stars the top Russian acting talent – the likes of Ingeborga Dapkunaite, Andrei Panin, and Sergei Garmash. Always true to the genre of exceptional realism, Balabanov did not betray his style in Morphia -- this movie will turn your guts out, but you won’t dare walk away!