Identity, Resistance, and Solidarity: Decolonizing Narratives in Belarusian Cinema

Session Submission Type: Panel

Affiliate Organization: Working Group on Cinema and Television

Brief Description

This panel offers an exploration of Belarusian cinema, focusing on its unique contributions to the ongoing decolonization efforts in the region and centering themes of identity and resistance. The papers provide a comprehensive look into contemporary Belarusian cinema ranging from mainstream genre productions to documentary and feature films, including women’s cinema and underground cinema. The panel addresses the following important questions: (1) how cinema bears witness and documents Belarusian resistance as a decolonial movement; (2) what insights cinema can offer on colonial legacies and complex structures of national identity and belonging, including engaging “feminist optics” and women’s “horizontal solidarity”; (3) how independent and underground cinema in Belarus can find an audience while defying the totalitarian state. These papers collectively examine the role of Belarusian cinema in challenging colonial narratives and authoritarian control: from exploring identity and belonging through horror genre, to documenting political resistance and engaging women’s voices in arts and civil society, to highlighting the resilience of independent filmmaking in totalitarian conditions.These questions are particularly salient today, when Belarusian arts have to contend with the oppressive political climate, Russian imperialism and complicity of Lukashenka’s regime in the war in Ukraine, in addition to the hardships of forced immigration, and challenges and accomplishments of diasporic cultural production, which includes establishment of the Belarusian Independent Film Academy in exile.

Sub Unit

• Cinema, Television, Electronic Media

Chair

• Sasha Razor, UC Santa Barbara

Papers

• Belarusian Horror Cinema through Postcolonial Lens - Volha Isakava, Central Washington U

• Cinema at the Crossroads: Belarusian Uprising of 2020 in Documentary Films - Sasha Razor, UC Santa Barbara

• Resisting Patriarchy in Contemporary Belarusian Cinema: Establishing the Female Gaze and Voice in the Films by Female Directors - Olga Klimova, U of Pittsburgh

• The Art of Survival: Practices of Independent Belarusian Film Production and Distribution in an Authoritarian State in the 2000s - Andrei Kureichyk, U of Chicago

Discussant

• Irina Schulzki, Ludwig-Maximilians-U Munich (Germany)