Roman Liberov is a documentary filmmaker and animator. He trained at the BBC specializing in documentary filmmaking, where he then worked for six years. Ilfandpetrov forms part of a cycle of animated documentaries about Russian writers, including Yuri Olesha, Joseph Brodsky, Georgi Vladimov, and Sergei Dovlatov.

Olga Sedakova, winner of the Dante Aligheiri Prize and the Alexander Solzhenitsyn Prize among others, will talk about her great teachers and friends, Sergei Averintsev, Venichka Erofeev, Mikhail Gasparov, Joseph Brodsky and others, intellectual pillars of the Soviet intelligentsia. She will of course also read some of her own inspiring and highly original poetry.

12 January 2014
Criterion Theatre, London
Chulpan Khamatova's charity performance, "The Hour When You Leap Into Souls As Into Arms", will take place at the Criterion Theatre at the heart of London, supporting children in the care of the Podari Zhizn and Gift of Life foundations.

15 January 18.30
Erarta Gallery, London
Make sure not to miss the official launch of Russky London! Coming to the celebrated contemporary art gallery, Erarta, and accompanied by the music of some of London's most talented Russian musicians, the launch will see in the Old New Year in style!

15 January 18.30
Erarta Gallery, London
Make sure not to miss the official launch of Russky London! Coming to the celebrated contemporary art gallery, Erarta, and accompanied by the music of some of London's most talented Russian musicians, the launch will see in the Old New Year in style!

We are pleased to invite you to the presentation of The Prime Russian Magazine which will take place at 6.30 p.m. on November 19 at Waterstones, Piccadilly. The magazine has been successfully published in Russia for four years. Starting from November 2013 it will be available from Waterstones Piccadilly in London and by subscription. The presentation will host a panel discussion on Marx & Freedom. Marxism was the main subject of one of The PRM’s special issues. The list of panellists includes Maxim Semelyak, Lev Danilkin, Alexsandr Pantsov and Aleksey Tzvetkov. They will discuss Karl Marx, his legacy and the Marxist approach to the concept of Freedom using the example of Soviet and, more broadly, modern Russian Marxism. It should be noted that over the last few years Marxism has been the subject of growing interest in the country where it dominated, perhaps unsuccessfully, the political landscape for more than half a century. Is this renewed interest a case of mass masochism, a passing fashion or a vital need? Why is Marxism, seemingly rejected and forgotten by Russians in the 1990s, becoming popular in today’s Russia? Perhaps Aleksey Tzvetkov's article on Evald Ilyenkov, published in The PRM special issue on Marxism, can provide some answers. The author dwells on the nature of Soviet Marxism by telling the personal story of a Marxist philosopher. Maxim Semelyak Maxim Semelyak is a journalist and The PRM’s Editor-in-Chief. After graduating from Moscow State University with a degree in Philosophy he has worked with a number of Russian print publications, including Afisha, Vedomosti, Playboy Russia and Vremya Novostey (News Time). At the turn of the century he was one of the leading music critics in Russia. He wrote the history of the Russian ska punk band — «Leningrad» — and launched The Forbes Kazakhstan magazine. Lev Danilkin Lev Danilkin is a journalist and The PRM’s Deputy Editor-in-Chief. He is one of the best Russian literary critics and the author of two biographies: «Man with an Egg» (about Alexander Prokhanov — a Russian journalist and writer) and «Yuri Gagarin». He translated Julian Barnes’ «Letters from London» into Russian. Lev Danilkin graduated from Moscow State University with a degree in Philology. He has written literary reviews for Vedomosti and Afisha. Aleksey Tzvetkov Aleksey Tzvetkov is a Marxist philosopher, a public figure, one of the founders of Falanster Bookshop, and a winner of the Nonconformism Award. He is the author of several books: «Urban Guerrilla’s Diary» (Дневник городского партизана), «Destroy After Reading» (После прочтения уничтожить) and «Pop Marxism» (Поп-марксизм). Alexsandr Pantsov Russian-American sinologist, historian, writer and translator. A doctor of historical sciences and professor at Capital University, Ohio. He is the author of more than one hundred academic papers and his works include the world's most comprehensive biographies of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaopong, both of which were based on his own original research and subsequently published in the series “Lives of Remarkable People”. In the edition of Prime Russian Magazine dedicated to Marxism, he wrote an essay on the genesis of different forms of Marxism implemented in modern China within the context of supermarkets. The Prime Russian Magazine The magazine highlights ideas that have the potential to influence the future of mankind. It addresses a broad range of topics, touching on philosophy, sociology, the history of culture, religion, psychology and geography. Normally, each issue covers one major topic: progress, education, war, America, laughter, miracle, memory, the post-human, the child and reading to name just a few. The list of authors includes writers, scientists, philosophers, poets and translators. Emphasis is placed on expert opinion rather than journalism as such; and the editors would rather choose a passage from a book than a critical review. Over the years the magazine has published the works of Julian Barnes, Ian McEwen, Sergey Kapitza, Slavoj Žižek, Jacques Attali, Franco Berardi, Hassim Taleb, Derek Walcott, Pyotr Shchedrovitsky, Robert Kaplan, Terry Eagleton, Vladimir Mikushevich, Georgy Mirsky, Olga Sedakova, Paul Bogard, Maxim Kantor, Douglas Copeland, Dominic Lieven, Yuri Mamleev, Alexander Ilichevsky, Boris Kupriyanov, Harm de Blij, and many more. RSVP is essential. Please reply to rsvp@academia-rossica.org For more information please contact Academia Rossica on press@academia-rossica.orgor call us on 0207 287 2614, 0207 287 5712

6 April – 9 June
Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX
This series of events and concerts examines how composers under the authoritarian regimes of Stalin and Hitler trod precarious paths between artistic freedom and survival.

19 May, 7.30pm
Barbican Hall, Silk St, London EC2Y 8DS
The London Symphony Orchestra perform Lutoslawski's Concerto for Orchestra and Tchaikovsky Symphony No 4, conducted by Sir Antonio Pappano.

The judges of the Rossica Translation Prize for 2014 faced an embarrassment of riches. The long-list was exceptionally strong this year, and included many new and gifted translators who will be shaping the reception of Russian literature in English for years to come. No less promisingly, it also included a large number of important works translated into English for the first time. All the long-listed translators and publishers are to be congratulated on what can truthfully be called an urozhainyi god, or ‘year of plenty’.

31 December, Monday, 2:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Barbican Centre Silk Street City of London EC2Y 8DS
Stunning music and beautifully performed dance from some of the most loved ballets of all time

14 December - 15 January
Barbican theatre, Silk Street London EC2Y 8DS
Following its sold-out season earlier this year, Complicite’s latest production returns to the Barbican for a limited run >>>

Director
SHORT STORIES >>>

Wednesday 26 September 2012, 18:15
Cine Lumiere, 17 Queensberry Place, SW7 2DT London
A deeply personal film, Nostalghia was the first feature film that Tarkovsky made outside the USSR. Suffused with exquisite cinematography by Giuseppe Lanci and music by Beethoven, Wagner, Verdi and Debussy, Nostalghia has been called the most poetic and beautiful of all Tarkovsky's works.

Sunday, 16 September 2012
Riverside Studios, London UK
Breaking on the banks of the Thames for one day only, Russian Wave is a celebration of contemporary Russian culture. Russian Wave will be awash with cinema, literature, theatre, art, music and animation, and much more!

8 October - 24 November 2012
Royal Opera House, Bow Street, WC2E 9DD London, UK
With instantly recognizable music and a timeless story of good against evil, Swan Lake is the greatest of Romantic ballets. Anthony Dowell's production draws upon the opulent style of 1890s Russia.

2 August - 11 August 2012,
London Coliseum, St. Martin's Lane, London, WC2N 4ES
Swan Lake brings the romance and high drama of the grand Russian ballet tradition alive.

28 July and 11 August 2012
Kensington Gardens, London, W8 4PX
On the 28th of July and the 11th of August prominent Russian musicians and pop and rock groups will perform as a part of RED ROCKS FESTIVAL and Sochi 2014 Cultural Olympiad at Russia.Sochi.Park – a fantastic venue to present Russia and Sochi 2014 Winter Games during the London-2012.

11, 12, 13, 15, 17 May
Join the London Symphony Orchestra and Valery Gergiev for a festival of five concerts, spread across three London venues, celebrating the many faces of composer Igor Stravinsky. Includes everything from the iconic Firebird and Rite of Spring to the hidden curiosities of Stravinsky's jazz miniatures.

Sunday 20 May, 7pm
Part of the Tricycle Theatre's Classical Music Series. Acclaimed violinist Tamsin Waley-Cohen leads the Honeymead Ensemble in a stunning performance of two of the great Russian string quartets.

18 - 20 May - The Royal Albert Hall The Imperial Ice Stars, the international ice dance sensation, make a triumphant return to the Royal Albert Hall with a dynamic new staging of their award-winning masterpiece, Swan Lake on Ice, following their acclaimed performance of Cinderella on Ice in 2010.

20 March 2012, Tricycle Theatre
A unique live cinema event with a modern electronic score and live accompaniment to a classic silent film.

3-7 April 2012, London Coliseum
The celebrated Eifman ballet company comes to the London Coliseum with two spectacular UK premieres: Anna Karenina and Onegin.

19 February 2012, Shaftesbury Theatre The Moscow State Gogol Theatre presents a family-friendly performance of “Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka” in Russian with English surtitles.

15 March 2012, HMV Forum One of Russia’s most exciting musicians performs a rare, one-night only London concert.

Thursday 22 March, Hammersmith Apollo
Legendary rock group DDT come to London as part of their world tour.

Andrey Rodionov is one of the most remarkable figures in contemporary Russian poetry, art, music and theatre. His career began in 2000 in Moscow as a performer on poetry slams, and in 2002 he was awarded the Russian Slam prize. He continues to be a leading figure in the development of the Russian slam poetry movement: in December 2010, as a curator of the SlovoNova poetry festival, he organised the first national Russian slam final in Perm.

Dina Rubina is one of the most widely-read Russian authors alive today. She was born in 1953, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where she later studied music at the Tashkent Conservatory. At sixteen her first short story appeared in the journal Iunost’, which continued to publish her work until the end of the Soviet Union. Life in the colourful environment of Tashkent was not always easy: Rubina had to turn to writing for stage and screen and finally moved to Moscow in the mid-1980s.

Andrei Zvyagintsev's latest success story takes Best Film and Best Director amongst others at the annual Golden Eagle Award Ceremony in Moscow.

Director, Generation p
Russian born American Ginzburg graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York and began his career in documentaries, music videos and short films. Generation P is his debut feature film.>>>

12th October - 12th November
Pushkin's classic novella is reinvented as a thrilling drama of the imagination at the Arcola Theatre this autumn.

On May 1, 200.., a certain individual arrived in Prague. I was that individual: Ilya Korolenko, attractively clean-featured and inconspicuous, with a dreamy look in my eyes and hair spiralling into a passionate, babyish twist over my forehead. In terms of intimate predilection, in terms of my mission, I am a poet, sometimes I put a few words together and revel in their magic, their incongruous voodoo

Living as a tramp was hard, but fascinating. He kept trying to find a new angle on things, an interesting way to get his teeth into Moscow, which he now saw as the same kind of special setting for thrills and action as his childhood – a kingdom of scrap yards and rubbish dumps, basements

Maxim T. Yermakov, the happy owner of a three-year-old Toyota and brand manager for several appalling varieties of milk chocolate, drove up to his chocolate office with his customary feeling of having no head on his shoulders. Meanwhile, the head was smoking and it could see the wet car park with the inflatable snowman standing in the black January puddle. But even so – it wasn’t there.

Hopelessly stuck in the traffic, Nastya cursed the laziness that had made her accept the offer of an official car from her new boss, Bolshakov. It would have been so much quicker by metro. Of course, if only she’d bothered to think for just a moment, she wouldn’t have taken the car, but everything happened so fast, she was caught on the hop.

Wednesday 21 September 2011 | 7.30pm Royal Festival Hall
The London Philharmonic Orchestra’s 2011/12 season opens with a concert dedicated to the music of Modest Mussorgsky.
Special offer for Academia Rossica website visitors!

Having once escaped from the Earth’s gravitational pull, on his return Gagarin naturally found himself back in its power and he felt it just like everyone else. But the unique status that in reality was his for only one and a half hours was miraculously prolonged: in the eyes of virtually the entire population of the planet he remained a body free of the influence of earthly gravity.

Video poetry is a new phenomena in the contemporary Russian arts scene. In today’s world, media has no limits - information is mixed together with a myriad of fast, dynamic images, and punchy sounds. Video poetry has incorporated these elements that are all around us and used them to create a new art form which has become extremely popular in Russia during the last couple of years. Leading experimental poets and film directors, including Kirill Serebrennikov and Valeria Gai Germanika, amongst others, have come together to create films based on poems read by the poets themselves. The performances are also strongly influenced by European artists of the 70s and 80s, such as Gianni Toti, Richard Kostelanetz, Arnaldo Antunes and Caterina Davinio, whose experimental work was considered arthouse and cutting edge thirty years ago, but seems to strike a chord with the world we live in today. In our culture of multi-media, the merging of poetry, music and film feels only natural. ACADEMIA ROSSICA will be premiering three programmes of video poetry at SLOVO literature festival. The three programmes will offer a unique opportunity to see the works of fifteen of the most important names in Russian video poetry, including Andrei Rodionov, Inna Kabysh and Alina Butokhnovskaya. Programme 1 & 3 will be screened at the Apollo Cinema, Piccadilly at 18.30 on 20 & 22 April. To book tickets, call 0871 220 6000 or go to www.apollocinemas.com Programme 2 includes readings from cutting edge contemporary Russian and British poets and takes place at Calvert 22 art gallery at 18.30. Attendance is by invitation only. These events are part of the SLOVO festival and organised in collaboration with Tom Chivers and Penned in the Margins. These programmes are curated by Andrei Rodionov, one of the leading contemporary Russian poets and Ekaterina Troepolskaya, who also curates the Piataya Noga video poetry festival.

29 March - 23 April, Finborough Theatre
Based on the 1927 black and white Russian film by Abram Room, Bed and Sofa is a musical written by Polly Pen and Laurence Klavan.

Dina Rubina is one of the most widely-read Russian authors alive today. She was born in 1953, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where she later studied music at the Tashkent Conservatory. At sixteen her first short story appeared in the journal Iunost’, which continued to publish her work until the end of the Soviet Union. Life in the colourful environment of Tashkent was not always easy: Rubina had to turn to writing for stage and screen and finally moved to Moscow in the mid-1980s.

Andrey Rodionov is one of the most remarkable figures in contemporary Russian poetry, art, music and theatre. His career began in 2000 in Moscow as a performer on poetry slams, and in 2002 he was awarded the Russian Slam prize. He continues to be a leading figure in the development of the Russian slam poetry movement: in December 2010, as a curator of the SlovoNova poetry festival, he organised the first national Russian slam final in Perm.

Andrey Rodionov is one of the most remarkable figures in contemporary Russian poetry, art, music and theatre. His career began in 2000 in Moscow as a performer on poetry slams, and in 2002 he was awarded the Russian Slam prize. He continues to be a leading figure in the development of the Russian slam poetry movement: in December 2010, as a curator of the SlovoNova poetry festival, he organised the first national Russian slam final in Perm.

28 November, 4pm
Another chance to catch Pavel Bardin's 'mockumentary', documenting the rise of xenophobia and nationalism in Russia. Followed by a Q&A with the director.

12-14 November 2010, St Petersburg
The festival aims to celebrate Russia's artistic contributions to the world and forge cultural relations between Russia and the West. St PetersBall with Corinthia will feature eminent cultural personalities and acclaimed artistic minds from the UK, Russia and other nations including Man Booker prize winning writer DBC Pierre, film director Mike Figgis, fashion designer Roksanda Ilincic, fashion designer Ozwald Boateng, taxidermy artist Polly Morgan, Turner prize winning Marc Quinn, film director John Hillcoat, designer Jasper Conran, Mat Collishaw - to name a few.

Diaghilev fever is taking London by storm. The V&A's major exhibition 'Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes, 1909-1929' reveals Diaghilev's enduring influence on 20th-century art, design and fashion. The V&A is also holding a number of other Diaghilev themed events, including 'The Music of Diaghilev with the Philharmonia Orchestra' and 'Rephrasing the Ballets Russes', in collaboration with the English National Ballet. And the perfect accompaniment to this year's season of Diaghilev events is Sjeng Scheijen's new biography of the arguably the greatest (and most controversial) impresario of all time.

30 September – 25 October
The Royal Ballet perform John Cranko's Onegin at the Royal Opera House. Stage designs and music taken from Tchaikovsky in a specially created score bring the world of imperial Russia vividly alive to complete a ballet of colour, drama, beauty and passion.

24 September - 3 October
Over 40 events covering dance, film, music, poetry, theatre and visual art will take place across Hampstead and Highgate. The programme includes Matthew Hurt’s 'Lightening Conductor' a dramatic profile of Diaghilev (played by Simon Callow) as well as classical music concerts focusing on the composers who worked with Diaghilev and an exhibition of photographs of Ballets Russes dancer Tamara Karsavina.
There will also a series of events entitled ‘Russian Voices’ which focus on Anton Chekhov (Jonathan Miller), Leo Tolstoy (Zinovy Zinik), the Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy and Anna Akhmatova’s cycle of poems, ‘Requiem’, read by Glenda Jackson.