Forum & Friends: 
Studio Tatyana

The third block of the Forum & Friends series focuses on documentary work from the Minsk-based Studio Tatyana, the only independent “women’s film and video studio” in the former USSR. Founded in 1991 by cinematographer Tatjana Loginova and screenwriters and directors Ella Milova and Irina Pismennaja, the studio produced and facilitated a wide range of film projects, the highlight being Eastern Europe’s first-ever International Women’s Film Festival, held in the Belarussian capital that same year. The collective’s work was of central importance not only to film culture, but also politically. Alexander Lukashenko, who has held power in Belarus since 1994, shut down the studio in 2003. The research-intensive works it produced before closure are unparalleled resources on the unofficial historiography of a European state that became a dictatorship (again) shortly after gaining independence. They are acts of political resistance, pushing back against all that has (once again) become acceptable in Belarus (and elsewhere): patriarchal reactionism, abuses of power, violence, repression, and atrocity.  (Barbara Wurm, Gaby Babić)