Finno-Ugric Film Festival 2015

Workshop call

The Finno-Ugric Film Festival (FUFF) announces its Scriptwriting workshop, to be held during the Festival in Tsiistre, Estonia, 10th-13th JUNE 2015.

We invite 12 applications from filmmakers who wish to participate in this workshop. Those selected will receive assistance as follows:

Between the Black and the Red Land

Trailer of Galina Krasnoborova’s Mari-language film “Between the Black and the Red Land” with subtitles in English.

There is only one young woman and two old women left of the whole nation. These old women are dreaming of unattainable – of motherhood. One of the old women never had any children, the second – lost her newborn baby many years ago. And the abortion through the ritualistic suicide of the young pregnant woman reveals the most morbid corners of the souls of the old women, who were deprived of motherhood.

Online Mari-English Dictionary published

The University of Vienna’s Mari-English dictionary was publicly unveiled in Yoshkar-Ola earlier today. The dictionary, found at dict.mari-language.com, is now freely accessible over the Internet.

With 42,561 headwords and 82,742 subentries and example sentences, including some 10,749 set phrases, this dictionary constitutes by far the largest effort to date to link a Finno-Ugric minority language of Russia with English. In fact, we know of no English-language resource on any minority language

Joy Of Creation

Ethnographic documentary
Running time: 47 min.
Translator: Jeremy BRADLEY, Mikhail DMITRIJEV
Announcer: John Sullivan
Sound post-production: Jevgeni CHERNOV
Film Director: Aleksei ALEKSEJEV

The Finno-Ugric peoples belong to a unique family of world cultures. Here, in the Orshanka District of the Mari El Republic, the founder of Mari drama was born: the playwright Yakov Shketan. Places commemorating him and his work can be found all over the district. A square in the center of the village of Orshanka carries his name. In 1968, a statue was erected in his honor. He is fondly remembered and revered by the Mari people, his life and his works are a shining moment in the history of Mari literature.

Summer School of Mari Language and Culture

Yoshkar-Ola, Republic of Mari El, Russian Federation
June 30 – July 20, 2014

Mari State University is happy to announce the annual Summer School of Mari Language and Culture organized by the Institute of National Culture and Intercultural communication and the International Office of Mari State University.

Udmurt language not obligatory in Udmurtia

Natalya Sudarikova

Head of Udmurt Republic State Council Standing Committee for Education, Culture and Youth Administration, Natalya Sudarikova claims an obligatory Udmurt language learning initiative unpromising.

An interest in the national language spark among Udmurt residents after a folk collective ‘Buranovskie Babushki’ the had taken part in the Eurovision song contest, claims the Head of Udmurt Republic State Council Standing Committee for Education, Culture and Youth Administration, Natalya Sudarikova.

Polluted Volga an Ecological Disaster for 60 Million Russians

The increasingly polluted Volga River is creating ahealth crisis for the 60 million Russian citizens who live in its enormous and economically important basin, but the Russian government has not been independently monitoring this situation since Vladimir Putin disbanded the State Ecology Committee in 2000.

In the current issue of “Argumenty nedeli,” journalist Denis Terentyev surveys the damage, noting that few officials appear to care although people living along Russia’s great river can see the increasingly negative impact of pollution on the river, its wildlife, and on themselves.