Pushkin Club and Rights in Russia present a UK premiere of ‘The Right to Memory’ (directed by Ludmila Gordon), a new documentary about Arseny Roginsky (30th March 1946 – 18th December 2017), renowned dissident historian and leader of Memorial. The screening will be followed by a memorial evening.
Speakers: Elena Zhemkova, Executive Director, Memorial, Mary McAuley, author of ‘Human Rights in Russia: Citizens and the State from Perestroika to Putin’, and Natalia Rubinstein, literary critic, Roginsky’s oldest friend.
6.30 – 9pm PLEASE NOTE EARLY START
Discussion in Russian with English interpreter
“The Right to Memory” documents Roginsky's reflections on his personal story, which is deeply embedded in the history of the country, or rather, on the history of the country through the prism of one man's life.
This year, Memorial marks 30 years since its founding. Roginsky tells about the earliest initiatives to create a memorial commemorating victims of mass repression, which grew into the largest informal political movement of the 1980s, and shares his observations on what Memorial has been able to achieve since.
The premiere of the film took place at Memorial in Moscow and in Perm on March 30th, 2018, the day of Roginsky's birth anniversary. On that day, the film was also shown simultaneously by many liberal Russian media outlets. It was for the first time that multiple media platforms held this kind of joint action - expressing the high regard they hold for Arseny Roginsky. Soon after, screenings and discussions followed in Kiev, Kharkov, St. Petersburg, Amsterdam, Washington, and now, in London.
Ludmila Gordon (film director of 'The Right to Memory') is a researcher specializing in content development for historical museum exhibitions. She has worked with Ralph Appelbaum Associates on creating the permanent exhibitions and media programs of the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center in Yekaterinburg, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow, among others.
Having joined Memorial in 1988 to help gather materials for the archive and museum, Ludmila stayed in touch throughout the years. In 2016, she approached Arseny Roginsky to share on film histhoughts on the place of Memorial in today's Russia and to tell his life story. Usually turning downsuch requests, reluctant to talk on camera about himself, Roginsky agreed this time. This recording would become his last.