In English | Sunday | February 12 | 8pm (1pm EST)
Mostly unknown to the international public, the role of Jewish artists in the Soviet animation industry enabled these talented artists to produce cartoons that became widely popular across the Soviet Union – and helped to transform a country that looked to the Tsar as their savior into a country that looked to the people.
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The winners of the Russian Revolution announced the most radical model of “emancipation” the contemporary world had seen at the time. Jews entered the country’s creative fields with an enthusiasm that the long history of the Pale of Settlement had seemingly extinguished. Even their heavy disappointment during the height of Stalinism did not cure artists of their utopian faith in the power of art. Jewish creative production flourished and came to define key aspects of what we now remember simply (and superficially) as “the Soviet Experiment.”
Our series traces the main institutional structures through which Soviet Jewish culture developed: Jewish artists in the State Animation Studio Soyuzmultfilm from the 1930s to the 1970s; the exhibition of Jewish art in the United States from the 1960s to the 1980s; and Israeli archival efforts to preserve the legacy of Soviet Jewry from the 1990s until today.