Precarity is a key word for the 1990s in Russia. Moreover, one can say that, in Russia, since the mid-1980s, the state of precarity, uncertainty and instability shapes collective emotions and moods. The changes caused by Perestroika and the dissolution of the USSR influenced not only political and economic spheres; it was the end of Soviet art and culture. Many taboos were broken and restrictions lifted; filmmakers started to look for new themes and approaches. At the same time, the general social uncertainty was mirrored by the new art. The aim of the proposed panel is, focusing on cinema, to examine how the state of precarity was represented in Russian culture in the beginning of the post-Soviet era. Which new topics moved to the centre of filmmakers’ attention? Which new genres began to develop? How the Soviet cultural and political heritage were reinterpreted in the cinema in the 1990s? These are the questions this panel will discuss on the basis of several illustrative cases.

Chair: Lilya Kaganovsky, U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Papers:
Lyubov Bugaeva, St Petersburg State U (Russia). Dreamers and Tough Guys in a Strange Blend of Comic and Tragic in the Cinema of the 1990s

Sergey Toymentsev, Saint Louis University. Towards a New Mass Spectator: Between Post-Soviet Art-House and Cooperative Cinema

Valery Vyugin, Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) RAS / St. Petersburg State U (Russia). A Cinema of Precarity: Russian Espionage Comedies of the 1990s

Discussant
Daria V. Ezerova, Columbia U