General Public

The Baltic Studies Program of the Yale MacMillan Center presents a screening of “Mariupolis 2”
2022 | 1 hr 52 min. | Documentary | Lithuania, Ukraine
Synopsis
In 2022, Mantas Kvedaravičius went back to Ukraine, Mariupol, at the heart of the war, to be with the people he had met and filmed in 2015. Following his death, his producers and collaborators have put all their strength into continuing transmitting his work, his vision and his films. Also a PhD in anthropology, Mantas Kvedaravičius wished to testify as a filmmaker as far as possible from the agitation of the media and the politicians. With huge force and sensitivity, Mariupolis 2 depicts life as it continues amidst the bombing and reveals images that convey both tragedy and hope.
Director
Mantas Kvedaravičius (1976-2022) was a Lithuanian-born filmmaker with a degree in social anthropology from Cambridge University. His first documentary film, Barzakh was selected in numerous festivals and won several awards, including the Amnesty International Prize and the Ecumenical Jury Prize at the Berlinale in 2011. His following two films, Mariupolis (2016) and Parthenon (2019) were selected at the Berlinale and the Venice International Critics’ Week, respectively. Mantas Kvedaravičius was captured and killed by Russian Forces in the end of March, 2022 in Mariupol while documenting Russia’s invasion of Ukrainian territory.

The European Studies Council of the Yale MacMillan Center and the Poynter Fellowship in Journalism at Yale present
“From Frontlines to Frontpages: Conversation with Valerie Hopkins”
Moderated by Marci Shore, Professor of History, Yale University
Lunch at 12:30pm ET, talk at 1:00pm ET
Location: Luce Hall, Rm 202
Part of the European & Russian Studies Community Lunch Seminars
Valerie Hopkins is an international correspondent for The New York Times, covering the Russo-Ukrainian war, as well as internal transformation of Russian society amidst war of aggression.
Ms. Hopkins will discuss how Ukrainian and Russian societies function during times of war, as well as how journalists manage to do their jobs in the midst of authoritarian regimes and hostilities, in a conversation with Professor Marcy Shore.
Ms. Hopkins began her journalistic career in Bosnia and Herzegovina at a local news outlet reporting on war crimes trials. She covered the Balkans and eastern Europe for a decade, most recently for the Financial Times, before moving to Moscow to join The New York Times. She is a 2022 recipient of Newswomen’s Club of New York’s Marie Colvin Award for Foreign Correspondence and the Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE) Distinguished Fellow Award.
Ms. Hopkins completed her master’s degree at Columbia Journalism School, where she won a scholarship named for Anne O’Hare McCormick, a New York Times journalist who in 1937 became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for foreign correspondence. At Columbia, her investigation into female war criminals won one of the school’s top awards
In 2022 Valerie Hopkins won the Marie Colvin Award for Foreign Correspondence for providing crucial updates and insights into the war in Ukraine and life under Russian occupation.
”From a sharp live update on developments on the battlefield to a revealing look at what it felt like in Moscow as men disappeared during Putin’s draft, Valerie has shown remarkable courage, empathy and insight in her reporting,” said Phil Pan, International editor of NYT.
This event is held under Chatham House Rule. Participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed. The purpose of the rule is to encourage open discussion since anything said is “off the record”.

The Baltic Studies Program of the Yale MacMillan Center presents a screening of “Burial” with the film’s Director and Writer Emilija Škarnulytė
Location: HQ (Humanities Quadrangle) Rm L02, 320 York St.
2022 | 60 min. | Documentary | Lithuania, Norway
Synopsis
A python slithers and curls over the abandoned control room of Chernobyl’s sister, the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, its radioactive core an unleashed monster that will slither through time for a million years. From Etruscan ruins and sunken cities to the most modern of underground repositories, director Emilija Škarnulytė follows our attempts to bury the immortal. Addressing the epochal effects of nuclear technology on all levels, Burial follows the cycle of power, an eternal return, another serpent eating its tail.
Bio: Emilija Škarnulytė (b. Vilnius, Lithuania 1987) is an artist and filmmaker.
Working between documentary and the imaginary, Škarnulytė makes films and immersive installations exploring deep time and invisible structures, from the cosmic and geologic to the ecological and political. Her blind grandmother gently touches the weathered statue of a Soviet dictator. Neutrino detectors and particular colliders measure the cosmos with otherworldly architecture. Post-human species swim through submarine tunnels above the Arctic Circle and crawl through tectonic fault lines in the Middle Eastern desert.
Winner of the 2019 Future Generation Art Prize, Škarnulytė represented Lithuania at the XXII Triennale di Milano and was included in the Baltic Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale of Architecture. With solo exhibitions at Tate Modern (2021), Kunsthaus Pasquart (2021), Den Frie (2021), National Gallery of Art in Vilnius (2021), CAC (2015) and Kunstlerhaus Bethanien (2017), she has participated in group shows at Ballroom Marfa, Seoul Museum of Art, Kadist Foundation, and the First Riga Biennial. In 2022, Škarnulytė participated in the group exhibition Penumbra organized by Fondazione In Between Art Film on the occasion of the 59th Venice Biennale. Her numerous prizes include the Kino der Kunst Project Award, Munich (2017); Spare Bank Foundation DNB Artist Award (2017), and the National Lithuanian Art Prize for Young Artists (2016)), and she was nominated as the candidate for the Ars Fennica art award 2023. She received an undergraduate degree from the Brera Academy of Art in Milan and holds a masters from the Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art.
Her films are in the IFA, Kadist Foundation and Centre Pompidou collections and have been screened at the Serpentine Gallery, UK, Centre Pompidou, France, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York and in numerous film festivals including in Rotterdam, Busan, and Oberhausen. Most recently she concluded her tenures at Art Explora and Cite des Art, which occurred on the heels of another significant residency at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture. She is a founder and currently co-directs Polar Film Lab, a collective for analogue film practice located in Tromsø, Norway and is a member of artist duo New Mineral Collective, recently commissioned for a new work by the First Toronto Biennial.

The Baltic Studies Program at the Yale MacMillan Center presents “Discipline and Care: Institutional Spaces in Late Soviet Estonia” by Ingrid Ruudi, Juris Padegs Postdoctoral Associate, Yale University
Location: Luce Hall, Rm 203
Register to attend on zoom: https://bit.ly/YaleBaltic-12423
Building up an image of a healthy and progressive Soviet society presupposed concealment and dislocation of subjects deviating from the social norm – the physically and mentally disabled, the elderly, and the orphaned or neglected children. What kind of places were assigned to such non-normative subjects? What were their spatial characteristics, how did these impact the living experiences of their inhabitants and contribute to the construction of such marginalised subjectivitites? The talk will focus on institutional spaces of Late Soviet Estonia, detailing the ideologies conditioning the establishment and design of the institutions as well as the architectural solutions determining the appearance and quality of the spatial environment. The architecture of nursing homes and orphanages will be analysed in juxtaposition with user accounts of the instititutions.
Ingrid Ruudi is senior researcher and visiting associate of the Institute of Art History and Visual Culture, Estonian Academy of Arts, and is currently Juris Padegs postdoctoral associate at the MacMillan Center of Yale University. Her dissertation was titled Spaces of the Interregnum: Transformations in Estonian Architecture and Art 1986 – 1994. She has also been active as a curator, including the Estonian pavilion at the Venice biennial and research exhibitions at the Estonian Museum of Architecture, and is editor-in-chief of the Estonian bilingual art history journal Kunstiteaduslikke Uurimusi / Studies in Art and Architecture.
Photo: Tilsi orphanage, screenshot from the film Naerata ometi (Well, Come On, Smile) by Leida Laius, 1978.

In 1923 when Mustafa Kemal Atatürk rebuilt modern Turkey on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, the Treaty of Lausanne ordered that all Muslims of Turkish decent who were living in Greece be exchanged with any Greek Christians living in Asia Minor. This population exchange of nearly two million people has left deep traces, many of which are still perceptible today. Fortunately one thing soothed the resulting pain and resentment: both Greeks and Turks had been growing olive trees since the olden days, providing a main source of survival and wealth. They lost their homes, but found new olive groves offering the livelihoods they needed.