Jewish Studies. The Centre for Jewish Studies and the Department of Drama at Manchester University are pleased to announce that the next Screen & Talk event
will be the streaming of ‘The Commissar’ Aleksandr Askoldov’s topical
Soviet film The Commissar (1967) tells the story of a pregnant Red Army
commissar, who stays with a Jewish family to give birth during the
Russian civil war in Ukraine. Co-written by the Ukrainian Jewish writer
Vassiliy Grossman, the film was among the rare productions of its era
that featured Jewish protagonists and referenced the Holocaust in ways
that subtly undermined the Soviet-state narrative of revolutionary
heroism. The film and its director were immediately banned after
completion and Commissar premiered internationally only at the 1988
Berlin Film Festival, when late Soviet Glasnost policies had finally
enabled the film’s release. 7 April 2022, 5.45pm GMT, online, register here. Further information.
