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--></style><title>Soviet Hippies - film screening and discussion on
March 20</title></head><body>
<div>The Visual Studies Platform and the estonian institute cordially
invite you to</div>
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<div><b>Soviet Hippies - Flowers and Hair Grow Everywhere</b></div>
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<div><b>film screening and discussion with filmmakers terje toomistu
and juliane fürst</b></div>
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<div><b>MARCH 20, 2018 /// 5.30 pm /// nador utca 11, Room
004</b></div>
<div><img src="cid:f06240812d6cca747ff96@[192.168.1.66].1.0"
width="597" height="403"></div>
<div>A wild flower power ride on the footprints of the Soviet hippie
movement takes you into the psychedelic underground of 1970s. Thrilled
by rock music, inspired by the cult of peace and love, the young
long-haired drop-outs craved for freedom and created their own System
in the Soviet Union despite the strict regime. Years later, a group of
eccentric hippies from Estonia take a road journey to Moscow where
people still gather annually on the 1st of June for celebrations
related to the tragic event of 1971, when thousands of hippies were
arrested by the KGB.</div>
<div>The recent rise of authoritarianism, setbacks in the struggles
for social justice and the occurrence of wars - also in Ukraine -
demands public discussion on the idea of non-violence. The documentary
sheds light on the history of the pacifist movement in Russia and
Eastern Europe, and proposes an alternative trajectory in global
cultural memory, demonstrating the vast creative potential that
emerged within the totalitarian regime. The film raises important
points about the workings of power and the politics of ecstasy,
tackling the question of freedom and self-fulfillment. Is freedom an
outward-looking social quality achieved via means of protest and
active engagement? Or is it rather an inward-looking journey, an
escapist lonerism, a spiritual path? Soviet hippies struggled for
their sense of freedom in many ways, but their active engagement with
politics either ended up severly or didn't change anything for
better. In the socio-political landscape of contemporary Russia, these
questions reoccur in frightening clarity. The story of the main
protagonist, Aare, suggests that being trapped by a body which is ill
leaves little choice but to focus on the vast potential of internal
dreamscapes. But how to deal with the feeling of being trapped by a
society which is ill?</div>
<div><i>The film screening will be followed by a discussion with the
director of the film, Terje Toomistu and co-producer and advisor
Juliane Fürst, moderated by Oksana Sarkisova.</i></div>
<div><b>Terje Toomistu</b> is an Estonian documentary filmmaker with a
background in anthropology. Her work often draws from various
cross-cultural processes, queer realities and cultural memory. She
holds double MA degrees (cum laude) in Ethnology and in Communication
Studies from the University of Tartu, where she is pursuing a PhD
degree in anthropology. In 2013-2014, she was also a Fulbright fellow
at UC Berkeley. Currently she is a visiting researcher at the
University of Amsterdam. She co-curated a multimedia exhibition about
Soviet hippies, which has been exhibited in museums and galleries
internationally.</div>
<div><b>Juliane Fürst</b> is a social and cultural historian of the
Soviet Union with a particular interest in late socialism,
counterculture, youth and dissidence. She is involved in a variety of
projects that investigate and document late socialist life, including
a new edition of the<i> Cambridge History of Communism,</i> for which
she co-edited volume III jointly with Silvio Pons and Mark Selden.
Currently she is in the process of finishing a monograph on the Soviet
hippie movement titled<i> Flowers through Concrete: Explorations in
the Soviet Hippieland</i>, which is scheduled to appear with Oxford
University Press in 2018.</div>
<div>See more here: <a
href=
"https://vsp.ceu.edu/events/2018-03-20/soviet-hippies-flowers-and-hair-grow-everywhere"><span
></span
>https://vsp.ceu.edu/events/2018-03-20/soviet-hippies-flowers-and-hai<span
></span>r-grow-everywhere</a> or at the Facebook page of the
event: <a
href="https://www.facebook.com/events/175410263090646/"
>https://www.facebook.com/events/175410263090646/</a>
</div>
<div><i>The event is organized in cooperation with the</i> <a
href="http://www.esztorszag.hu/"><i>Estonian
Institute</i></a><i>.</i></div>
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<div><i><b>Save the date for our upcoming events!</b></i></div>
<div><i><b>March 22, 5.30 pm</b></i> <a
href=
"https://vsp.ceu.edu/events/2018-03-22/araf-screening-didem-pekuns-film"
><i><b>Araf - Screening of VSP teaching fellow Didem Pekün's
film</b></i></a></div>
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<div><a href="http://vsp.ceu.edu/"><i>Visual Studies
Platform</i></a><i> (VSP) is a cross-disciplinary initiative designed
to explore and propose innovative approaches to research and teaching
visual imagery in the digital century.</i></div>
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<div><i>Powered by the CEU Humanities Initiative</i></div>
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<div><img src="cid:f06240812d6cca747ff96@[192.168.1.66].1.1"
alt="image002 9.jpg" width="278" height="97"></div>
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