An Interview with Marina Goldovskaya, a “Russian American” Filmmaker

In many ways, Marina Goldovskaya’s visual oeuvre and the trajectory of her life echo the major themes of this volume. Her remarkable documentariesfrom the award-winning Solovki Power (1988), a harsh indictment of the gulag system, to A Bitter Taste of Freedom (2011), which details the domestic life of the investigative journalist Anna Politovskaya (1958-2006)- narrate important historical moments of late Soviet and post-Soviet history through the voices and stories of Russian characters who seem strangely familiar and achingly human. Like Dziga Vertov (1896-1954), a brilliant Soviet pioneer in documentary film, Goldovskaya is intent on capturing the ineffable essence of life as it unfolds or is relived through memory and commemoration. Unlike Vertov, however, Goldovskaya anchors her visual frames in recognizable plots and familiar narrative patterns that foreground emotional identification with the lives of her subjects.

Duke Scholars

Author Beth Holmgren Slavic & Eurasian Studies