Скачать или смотреть Cinematic Depopulation as a Variety of Cultural Imperialism

A SSEES Russian Cinema Research Group seminar with Yuri Shevchuk

This paper discussed cinematic depopulation, the strategy of appropriation of the colonized by the colonizer widely used in the Soviet and post-Soviet cinema made in Ukraine and Russia and, until now, never analysed in academic literature. The cinematic depopulation is a particular mode of filmic representation whereby a given ethnoscape (Ukraine) is cleansed of the national community (Ukrainians) that has always considered it its ancestral homeland and instead is populated by the colonizer (Russian characters) as if it were an integral part of his historical territory. As a form of Russian cultural imperialism, this strategy continues to be widely used in both Ukrainian and Russian film production today to promote the idea of Ukraine that is conceivable outside of and without the Ukrainian language, culture, and other traditional attributes of Ukrainian national identity.

This event was recorded on 16 May 2022.