Leonid Parfenov: Premiere of Nabokov, Good Russian and the New Volume Namedni. 2021–2025.On February 7th at the Kino Lucerna in Prague, Leonid Parfenov will host
the premiere screening of his new documentary, Nabokov, a Good Russian, and present the
newly released volume Namedni 2021–2025. The evening will be followed by an audience Q&A and a book signing featuring the new volume. The event will run for approximately three hours.
Nabokov, Good RussianVladimir Nabokov, the last great figure of Russian literature to become
a classic of international modernism, left his
native Petrograd as early as 1917, and his entire career unfolded in exile. Yet
he remained a committed Russian patriot and saw himself as an heir to the
traditions of Pushkin and Tolstoy. He
regarded Soviet rule — and the
“socialist realist” literature it produced — as a
historical aberration that would, sooner or later, come to an end.This is perhaps
the most important lesson that today’s Russian émigrés — now part of what is already considered
the fifth wave of emigration — can draw from Nabokov’s life and from
the experience of the first wave: the confidence to stand by one’s convictions
despite the regime ruling one’s homeland and despite those compatriots who support it.
The film was shot
in Berlin, London, Paris, at Cornell University in the United States, and in Montreux, Switzerland.In the dramatized sequences,
Vladimir and Véra Nabokov are portrayed by Maksim Sukhanov and Chulpan Khamatova.The film also features
Noize MC and Monetochka, performing songs they wrote using Nabokov’s poetry.Namedni. 2021–2025The television project Namedni began in 1997 as a documentary series about the
events, people, and phenomena that defined the Soviet era. A book
edition followed in 2009, and
twelve volumes have since been published.
Namedni. 2021–2025 is the first book in the series to be
published outside Russia.The new volume covers the first half of the 2020s — a period that, looking back today, can seem almost dominated by a single subject.
The war — the so-called “special military operation,” now lasting
longer than the Great Patriotic War —
the Prigozhin mutiny, the capture of Bakhmut, Operation Spiderweb, and attacks on the Belgorod region. Yet the project’s signature “events–people–phenomena” approach also makes room for Labubu and Ozempic, The Boy’s Word: Blood on the Asphalt and quadrobers, artificial intelligence and Vanya Dmitrienko.With 242 defining phenomena and
more than 570 illustrations, the volume
brings together the things without which it is impossible to picture these years — and even harder to understand them.The author will sign every copy of
Namedni. 2021–2025 purchased during the evening.About the AuthorLeonid Parfenov is a
journalist, television presenter, and
creator of documentary projects including Namedni, Russian Empire, Living Pushkin, Ptitsa-Gogol, Russia in Bloom, The Eye of God, Russian Jews, Russian Georgians, and others.
February 7th, Prague, Kino Lucerna110 00 Nové Město, Prague, Czech RepublicShow on mapShow: 19:00