Speakers Series

In celebration of International Women’s Day on March 8, 2021, the Forum for Cultural Engagement, the United States Embassy and the American Center will launch Frame Work, a six-part, screening series featuring short films by Russian and American women filmmakers with a post-screening discussion facilitated by a moderator with the two filmmakers.

The screenings present unique pairings of films by Russian and American women filmmakers showcasing diverse narrative, experimental, documentary and animation films. The moderators facilitating the discussion with the filmmakers include film scholars, writers and critics and literary scholars.

Frame Work is an initiative of the Forum for Cultural Engagement.

Curated by Cynthia Madansky.

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March 8, 2021 – “Eight Images from the Life of Nastya Sokolova” by Vladlena Sandu and Alena Kotova & “Three Songs About Liberation” by Cauleen Smith. (Moderator for post-screening discussion:Maria Muzdybaeva)

March 15, 2021 – “Focus on Breathing” by Lyaisan Yunusova & “Stranger Baby” by Lana Lin. (Moderator for post-screening discussion: Anastasia Kostina.)

March 22, 2021 -“Grey” by Daria Lixaya & “Optimism” by Deborah Stratman. (Moderator for post-screening discussion: Lilya Kaganovsky.)

March 29, 2021 – “Drake, Rope, and Acorn” by Alina Titorenko & “How to Fix the World” by Jacqueline Goss. (Moderator for post-screening discussion: Masha Shpolberg.)

April 5, 2021 – “Vera” by Yana Sariadi & “Yá’át’ééh Abiní” by Morningstar Angeline. (Moderator for Post-screening discussion: Maria Kuvshinova.)

April 12, 2021 – “Slalåm” by Anastasia Vorotnikova & “All Water Has a Perfect Memory”by Natalia Almada. (Moderator for post-screening discussion: Anastasiya Osipova.)

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What is required to achieve success as an artist in America? The ‘Shop Talks” master class and lecture series highlight the creative process of renowned American artists from a wide variety of disciplines. The series features a theater artist who builds large-scale productions with puppets, a dancer/choreographer who also runs a full-time dance school, a Broadway music director/conductor/producer, a theater director who develops original musicals from the ground up, and a tap dancer inspired by Latin, Soul, Funk and Hip Hop. These celebrated virtuosos speak live from their homes about their careers and the challenges and surprises of virtual collaboration in this time of isolation.

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June 3, 2020 – Dan Hurlin (In partnership with Obratsov Puppet Theater in Moscow; moderated by Tom Lee.)

June 10, 2020 – Calvin Booker (In partnership with Vortex Dance Theater.)

June 17, 2020 – Kris Kukul (In partnership with Broadway Moscow Theater Company.)

June 24, 2020 – Elizabeth Parkinson (In partnership with the Boris Shukin Theater Institute.)

July 1, 2020 – Amanda Charlton (In partnership with GITIS Russian Institute of Theater Arts.)

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What can we learn from the day-to-day lives of musicians working to transcend human difference and geographic boundaries? Shelter Sounds is a unique series featuring music videos and conversations with leading American musicians streamed from their homes in the U.S. Featuring exceptional artists who play a vast range of musical styles, including pop, rock, jazz, go-go, folk, soul and R&B, Shelter Sounds offers an intimate view of the day-to-day lives of musicians who are writing, producing and creating music live from their homes.

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June 5, 2020 – Grace McLean
June 19, 2020 – Tim Easton
June 26, 2020 – Mary Lee’s Corvette

July 10, 2020 – Miramar
July 17, 2020 – Caleb Hawley
July 24, 2020 – Sweet Megg
July 31, 2020 – Quinn DeVeau

August 14, 2020 – Elijah Jamal Balbed
August 21, 2020 – Migguel Anggel
August 28, 2020 – Della Mae

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The American Center in Moscow invites everyone interested in drama and theater to a special talk by John Eisner, an American actor and theater director, and producer. In his talk, John Eisner will share his view on American theater and culture.

John Clinton Eisner co-founded The Lark, an international theater laboratory based in New York City, in 1994 as a community of theater professionals dedicated to the playwright’s vision. He has grown The Lark into an award winning “think tank for the theater,” with local, national and global reach. He divides his time between working directly with playwrights and creating strategies with artistic leaders in the United States and abroad to advance new plays into the repertoire. He has collaborated with partner theaters, literary agencies and funders to develop multiple-production “pipelines” for new plays.

Speaker’s Bio:

Trained as an actor, John Eisner began his transition to directing and producing through his experiences at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference, the National Theatre of the Deaf, the Denver Center Theatre Company and Williamstown Theatre Festival. He worked in casting for Johnson-Liff Casting Associates, ticket sales at the Roundabout’s Criterion Center Box Office and as managing director and associate artistic director at Rhode Island’s Colonial Theatre (where he co-founded Westerly Shakespeare in the Park, now in its 25th season, and Plays in Progress, a program that eventually led to the formation of The Lark).

He has directed plays by Calderon, Yeats, Wilder, Shakespeare, John Patrick Shanley, Jeroen van den Berg, Anton Dudley, Aditi Brennan Kapil, ElizabethLogun, Ian Rowlands and Lloyd Suh, among others, and worked with hundreds of writers on new plays at The Lark. He has led workshops at many universities and served as advisor for CEC Artslink, the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, Theatre Development Fund, Theatre Communications Group, National New Play Network, TheatreForum Magazine, Transport Group and the Lucille Lortel Awards Committee and on the boards of the National Theatre Conference and the Shakespeare Theatre Association of America (of which he was a charter member). He received degrees from Amherst College and the National Theatre Conservatory.

At the start of her career, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville was often the only woman in a company of male designers and university professors. Design was just as homogeneous: posters, illustrations, and ads spoke the language of men. To change the situation, she began to use her visual and physical work to invite and reveal differences in gender and race.

Sheila believes that differences in general, and specifically in sexuality, continue to be overlooked and underrated in many places and by many people. She is convinced that graphic design is a powerful tool for social change that scrambles the hierarchy of center and periphery, private and public, powerful and powerless, by creating a sense of place, space, and time. During her presentation at Strelka on August 21, Sheila will speak about her public art projects including Pink, demonstrating how a poster discussing the color pink can draw attention to gender inequality and, eventually, make design more inclusive.

Speaker’s Bio:

Sheila Levrant de Bretteville is a designer, artist, curator, and educator. She holds degrees in art history from Barnard College and Yale University. In 1971 she created the first women’s design program. In 1973, de Bretteville founded the Women’s Graphic Center and co-founded the Feminist Studio Workshop (along with Judy Chicago and Arlene Raven), both based at the Woman’s Building. In 1990, Sheila joined Yale University as The School of Art’s first tenured female professor.

Tonight we are meeting with Kiel Johnson, an American artist to talk about living a creative life and making beautiful objects with the public.

Kiel Johnson: “Through layered narratives and storytelling, my work speaks to my travels and adventures of everyday life. I think of myself as an explorer, setting out each day on an unchartered path of mediation manifested in drawing and sculpture.”

Speaker’s Bio:

Kiel Johnson is a Los Angeles based artist, currently running around the west coast, getting involved in any creative project that will have him. With an emphasis on drawing and sculpture, his works always say handmade, hard work and having fun. Kiel brings the inanimate to life, giving us a world not unlike ours but entirely his. Collaboration has become a big part of his practice as well. Through epic workshops, artist talks & collaborative video projects, Kiel uses simple materials and hand made ingenuity to bring the infectious disease of creativity to anyone willing to engage.

Tonight we are discussing quarantine as a peculiar kind of human-exclusion zone. We will refer to such questions as including the diagnostic technologies, algorithmic modeling, and automated infrastructures that will determine its future.

The spaces under quarantine are used to separate one thing from another for the purpose of preventing infection. Travelers exposed to pandemic diseases are often placed in quarantine; spam emails can be quarantined; even rock samples returned from the moon have been held in quarantine since their arrival back on Earth. The need for quarantine has shaped international boundaries, led to the invention of new documents segregating the healthy from the sick.

Speaker’s Bio:

Geoff Manaugh— writer and the author of A Burglar’s Guide to the City, on the relationship between crime and architecture, which was a New York Times-bestseller for two months, and, in 2016, was optioned for television by CBS Studios. In 2004 Manaugh launched a widely acclaimed BLDGBLOG (“building blog”). Because of BLDGBLOG, Wired named Manaugh one of “the 18 people who will tell you everything you need to know about design”. Manaugh regularly covers issues related to cities, design, crime, infrastructure, and technology for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, New Scientist, The Daily Beast, and many other publications. His short story “Ernest,” published by VICE in October 2017, is currently being adapted for film. Manaugh is former co-director of Studio-X NYC, an off-campus event space and urban futures think tank run by the architecture department at Columbia University. He has also been Editor-in-Chief of Gizmodo (2013-2014), a Contributing Editor at Wired UK (2009-2013), and Senior Editor of Dwell (2007-2009).

Tonight we are discussing quarantine as a peculiar kind of human-exclusion zone. We will refer to such questions as including the diagnostic technologies, algorithmic modeling, and automated infrastructures that will determine its future.

The spaces under quarantine are used to separate one thing from another for the purpose of preventing infection. Travelers exposed to pandemic diseases are often placed in quarantine; spam emails can be quarantined; even rock samples returned from the moon have been held in quarantine since their arrival back on Earth. The need for quarantine has shaped international boundaries, led to the invention of new documents segregating the healthy from the sick.

Speaker’s Bio:

Nicola Twilley — a contributing writer at the New Yorker, co-host of the podcast Gastropod, co-director of Studio-X New York. She is also the author of the blog Edible Geography, co-founder of the Foodprint Project, designer, and curator with exhibitions installed at Storefront for Art and Architecture and the Pratt Manhattan Gallery. Her works were published in The Atlantic, Volume, Domus, Landscape Architecture, The Architects’ Newspaper, Dwell, Business Insider, and Wired UK.