Het doel van Dutch Wednesday is verdieping en uitwisseling van kennis en stimulering van academische samenwerking. Tot de doelgroep behoren Russische en buitenlandse studenten, docenten en alumni. Vaak leiden de bijeenkomsten tot nieuwe contacten en gezamenlijke samenwerkingsinitiatieven.

Deze serie is tot stand gekomen met de financiële hulp van het Wilhelmina E. Jansen fonds.

Afgelopen lezingen in 2020: 

November 18:  Russian cinema and the Dutch Filmliga; Ivens and Schuitema in Russia.

Mark-Paul Meyer, Senior Curator bij het Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam

De Nederlandse filmcultuur is vanaf het begin erg internationaal geweest. De collectie van het Eye Filmmuseum is een weerspiegeling van deze internationale filmcultuur en een groot deel van de collectie is dus niet-Nederlands. De vele Russische films in de collectie, vanaf de jaren 1910 tot vandaag, vertegenwoordigen de belangstelling voor Russische films in Nederland. De klassieke Sovjet-cinema uit de jaren 1920 werd gewaardeerd door leden van de Filmliga, een kring van jonge filmmakers, ontwerpers en critici. Jonge Nederlandse filmmakers, zoals Joris Ivens en Paul Schuitema, gingen naar de Sovjet-Unie om films te maken.

Na de oorlog bleef de klassieke Sovjet-cinema zeer invloedrijk, bijvoorbeeld op het werk van documentairemaker Johan van der Keuken. Met uitzondering van enkele schermaanpassingen van literaire meesterwerken en enkele ‘auteurs’ zoals Kalatozov en Tarkovsky, bleef de nieuwe Sovjet-cinema uit de jaren zestig en zeventig in Nederland onderbelicht. De Nederlandse belangstelling voor de Sovjet-cinema kreeg echter een sterke boost toen het Rotterdam Film Festival vanaf 1972 vele artistiek fascinerende films naar Nederland bracht. Glasnost en perestroika maakten het mogelijk dat verschillende gecensureerde meesterwerken in Nederland te zien waren en dat Russische en Nederlandse filmmakers tegenwoordig vaak samenwerken en in beide landen werken.

Mark-Paul Meyer is senior curator van het Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam en is de collectiespecialist voor de Russische cinema. Hij studeerde filosofie en fotografie en werkte als filmcriticus en schreef veel over de Russische cinema. Voor Eye was hij ook co-curator van de tentoonstelling over Johan van der Keuken in Eye in 2013.

Details

• De lezing begint om 19.00 en is online
• Voertaal is het Engels
• Toegang is gratis, vooraf wel inschrijven
• Inschrijven via het e-mailadres: info@nispb.ru 

21 october: "The Mind and Works of Leonardo da Vinci"

Prof. dr. Michael Kwakkelstein, Universiteit Utrecht
Michael W. Kwakkelstein is Professor of Art History, specialized in the visual arts and art theory of the Renaissance in Italy. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Leiden with a thesis entitled: Leonardo da Vinci as a physiognomist. Theory and drawing practice (Primavera Press, Leiden 1994, second rev. ed. Leiden 2014). His research is focused on the relation between art theory and artistic practice. His findings (with particular emphasis on Leonardo da Vinci) have been published in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Print Quarterly, Apollo, Gazette-des-Beaux-Arts, Artibus et Historiae en Letteratura & arte. 

Today Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) enjoys the reputation as the most famous universal genius. But what exactly is his artistic and intellectual legacy and what drove the artist from Florence to devote more time to scientific and technological research and writing than to painting?

Details

• The lecture starts at 18:00 (GMT +2) and is online 
• Lecture is in English
• Admission is free, by prior registration
• Registration is by e-mail: info@nispb.ru 

February 19, "Imagination & Utopias"

Dr. Jaap Grave, University of Münster, Free University of Amsterdam, State University of St. Petersburg

On February 19, the second Dutch Wednesday lecture was held at the Netherlands Institute in St. Petersburg. The lecture will be given by dr. Jaap Grave. He is affiliated with the Faculty of Dutch Studies at the University of Münster and the State University of St. Petersburg. The lecture was about imagination and utopias in literature.

This lecture looks on the concept of imagination and identity in modern literature. Dr. Grave first briefly focused on two Greek characters: on Procrustes, a robber in a Greek legend, and on Hercules, in the Classical Mythology a hero of superhuman strength. After that examined two important motives that are connected to those characters, to utopian dreams and to imagination in modern 20th century literature: the sublime and epiphanies.

Dr. Jaap Grave (1964) studied Germanic language and literature at the University of Groningen and the University of Münster and obtained his PhD in Germanic Languages ​​(Dutch and German) at the University of Ghent, on the thesis Zulk vertalen is een werk van liefde (1999) . He is currently a lecturer in Dutch Studies at the State University of St. Petersburg and affiliated with the University of Münster. He also taught at various universities in cities around the world, and published books and scientific articles.

29 januari: "Traces of trauma. Two cities and the Second World War: Nijmegen and St. Petersburg" 

Prof. dr. Evert van der Zweerde en dr. Lennert Savenije – Radboud Universiteit

2020 marks the 75th commemoration of the end of the Second World War on the Western and Eastern front. In the Netherlands as well as in Russia, the end of the war will be commemorated on a national, local and individual level. It is therefore interesting to compare how WW2 is commemorated today in a Russian and a Dutch city. Are there similarities, differences? Moreover, how can (the approach of) history explain this? What can we learn from each other?

Nijmegen, the 10th city by population in the Netherlands, is regarded as the oldest city in the country. In its long history as a strategic border fortress, the town has been invaded many times, for the last time during the Second World War by the invading German army in 1940 and by the American and British army in 1944. After the only partly successful allied military operation Market Garden, Nijmegen became the most northern ‘liberated’ city on the Western front until the offensive against Germany in February 1945. The town was under fire for months, but not evacuated. Nijmegen was, so to speak, ‘liberated, but not free’.

The year 1944 had already started disastrous for Nijmegen. The city was chosen as a target of opportunity and hit by an aerial bombing raid by the United States Army Air Forces on 22 February 1944. During one year, approximately 2000 inhabitants died, one of the highest amounts of civilian casualties in one city in the Netherlands. Nevertheless, not many people in the Netherlands know about this history. The question is: why? And what makes the comparison between St. Petersburg and Nijmegen, Russia and the Netherlands, such an interesting one?

Prof. dr. Evert van der Zweerde (born 1958) is professor of social and political philosophy at Radboud University Nijmegen. His fields of interest are political philosophy (questions of ideology, democracy, identity) and Russian philosophy. He wrote his PhD on philosophy in the USSR (for which he received the Premium Erasmianum), and recently a collection of his articles appeared in Russian translation: Взгляд со стороны на историю русской и советской философии; сборник статей (СПб: изд. Алетейя, 2017).

Dr. Lennert Savenije (born 1985) works as a historian at Radboud University Nijmegen. He focusses on the history of the German occupation of the Netherlands during WW2 and has written a book about Nijmegen during wartime. This book was awarded with the Van Winterprijs, the prize for the best local and regional history book in 2019.