Screening: 'Land of Oz' (dir. Vasily SIgarev, 2015)

On December 31st, Lena searches for Torforezy Street somewhere deep in Ekaterinburg, where she has just gotten a job as a cashier at a kiosk. However, her journey is repeatedly waylaid, first by a car accident, and then by several men who loosely resemble the Tinman, the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

With an extremely innovative approach to language, Vasily Sigarev shows that what has flooded the post-ideological space of 2000s Russia is the obscenity — Russian mat. Obscene language provides a unifying framework through which the post-Soviet subjects can understand one another and is much more effective than any fairy-tale ideology at providing a common language. Following in the footsteps of Gogol, Saltykov-Shchedrin, and Chekov, Sigarev stakes a claim as the ultimate satirist of the post-Soviet space.

Program in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies | View More Events
Co-hosted with: Princeton Institute for International & Regional Studies, Program in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (OWNER), Slavic Languages & Literatures

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