Parfenov.Nabokov.Namedni

Leonid Parfenov in Limassol. Premiere of “Nabokov, Good Russian” and Presentation of the New Volume “Namedni. 2021–2025”

On February 27 at the Pattihio Theatre in Limassol, Leonid Parfenov will host the premiere screening of his new documentary, Nabokov, Good Russian, and present the newly released volume Namedni. 2021–2025. The screening and presentation will be followed by an audience Q&A and a signing of the new book. The event will run for approximately three hours.

“Nabokov, Good Russian”

Vladimir 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. It is 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. 2021–2025”

The 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,” has now lasted 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.