Alisa Ganieva had a public talk at the 24th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival in Jihlava (the Czech Republic) which is the biggest of its kind in Сentral and Eastern Europe. Her event was moderated by the festival’s organizer Marek Hovorka and a filmmaker Filip Remunda.
Identity in Motion
Documentary dialogue with Alisa Ganieva
In addition to traditional prejudices and the limited social mobility faced by women in the Russian Caucasus region, there has also been a visible shift towards conservativism, spread with the help of modern technology. Russian state propaganda, combined with the influence of Islamic fundamentalism, has thus contributed to creating a situation in which young people have more conservative beliefs than their parents or grandparents. Alisa Ganieva is a writer from Dagestan, the southernmost republic of the Russian Federation. Her first book was published under a male pseudonym so that it would not be pigeonholed as “women’s literature.” Her books explore the issues faced by society in the Russian Caucasus and speculate about possible dystopian scenarios.
Alisa Ganieva
A novelist originally from Caucasian Dagestan, now living in Moscow. She writes about the realities of contemporary Russia. Her novels The Mountain and the Wall and Bride and Groom attracted wide media attention and have been translated into many languages. In addition to writing, Ganieva also participates in civic activism and is a member of the board of the Moscow PEN Centre.
Moderators
Marek Hovorka
Director of the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, founded in 1997. He studied documentary filmmaking at FAMU from 1998 to 2005. Hovorka is the co-founder of Doc Alliance, a network of European documentary film festivals, the film market East Silver, and DAFilms, an online distribution platform for documentary films.
Filip Remunda
Czech director, cameraman, and producer. He studied documentary filmmaking at FAMU and co-founded the Institute of Documentary Film, which helps to promote Czech film abroad. He gained wider public awareness along with Vít Klusák with their controversial film reality show about a fictitious hypermarket entitled Czech Dream. He received the Pavel Koutecký Award for his film The Tadpole, the Rabbit, and the Holy Ghost.
