Category: Новини

Back when 2022 started, Kristina Kadashevych surely could not have envisioned ending the year in the city of Richmond, in the U.S. state of Virginia, performing as the sugarplum fairy (and two other roles) in Richmond Ballet’s annual holiday extravaganza, The Nutcracker.

But then, the Ukrainian ballerina never could have imagined the year would turn out the way it has.

Kadashevych arrived for our interview in a second-floor studio at the Richmond Ballet dressed in a leotard, leggings and soft, puffy booties to keep her feet toasty. She started off, apologizing in advance for her English. “My English is not perfect,” she said — but it was really good — and then she told her story.

Last February, on the day before she was supposed to fly to Paris to join the Kyiv City Ballet for a tour as a guest principal dancer, Russian troops invaded Ukraine. Instead of boarding a plane for Paris, Kadashevych, her 2-year-old son and her parents had to flee their home in Kharkiv, in the eastern part of Ukraine; crowd onto a train; and evacuate to the presumed safer western reaches of the country.

“It was dangerous,” she said, “and we were scared.”

What did they take with them?

“Just kid stuff,” she said with a smile, “and kid. That’s all.”

More soberingly, she recalled how difficult it was to leave home, not knowing when they would be able to return.

“You don’t know where you’re going. You have nothing. It’s a strange feeling.”

‘You cannot plan anything’

They eventually took refuge at the home of another ballet dancer, and Kadashevych, 33, made the difficult decision to leave her family and go ahead and join the ballet company in Paris.

“I needed to work because I have no practice,” she said. “I was just sitting and losing my profession.”

Artistic director Stoner Winslett explained why Richmond Ballet dancers went to great lengths to keep dancing through the pandemic.

“Dancers are like Olympic athletes; if you lie around your apartment and don’t train, you lose your skill,” she said.

Kadashevych has been dancing since she was 9 and professionally for the past 15 years. She never considered another line of work, saying that dancing brought her interesting experiences, extensive travel and unmatched joy. “Ballet gives you everything.”

She left her family, thinking she would return soon. A month or two. It didn’t work out that way as the war raged on.

“Everything is so — how to explain — you cannot plan anything.”

Kadashevych and the Kyiv City Ballet went on a tour — France, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom and later the United States — and were warmly greeted everywhere they went.

“In Europe, our performances were like a charity to help Ukraine,” she said. “Often, a lot of refugees from Ukraine came to those performances, so we felt we were doing important things and helping our country the way we can.

“Here in the U.S., we also have found huge support all over. Here, I also feel that everybody cares about me a lot, and I appreciate that.”

In between the tours, she went home to Ukraine for a month over the summer to visit her son, Lev, who will turn 4 in March.

“It was a very happy time,” she said. “I remember the moment when I come. It was early morning, and my son was sleeping, and I just lay next to him and waited until he woke up, and he could not believe it. ‘Really, Mommy, really?!’ He was so happy.”

‘Unexpected and very interesting’

So, how did Richmond happen?

She shares a common acquaintance with Igor Antonov, another native Ukrainian who was a longtime dancer with the Richmond Ballet and now is an artistic associate with the company and director of Richmond Ballet II. He texted Kadashevych and asked if she’d like to join the Richmond Ballet on a temporary basis. Her answer: Yes.

“It was unexpected and very interesting for me,” said Kadashevych, who came to Richmond while the rest of the Kyiv company returned to Europe.

Kadashevych is temporarily replacing a Richmond Ballet dancer on maternity leave. Winslett said “bringing a ballerina here who is unable to currently dance in her home country would be another way that our organization could further” the ballet’s mission “to awaken, uplift and unite human spirits through the power of dance.”

Kadashevych will remain with the company through February and also will perform in Firebird with Serenade, Feb. 17-19.

For The Nutcracker, Kadashevych danced the roles of the Sugarplum Fairy, the Snow Queen and Mrs. Silberhaus, though not all in the same performances. Kadashevych said she has danced in several versions of Nutcracker, but never one quite like Richmond’s — “It’s absolutely different, so it’s a new Nutcracker for me,” she said — and never three roles in one production.

“For me, it’s unusual … but it’s interesting to try everything because all roles are interesting and beautiful, and I really want to dance them all,” she said. “It’s a challenge, but it’s a good challenge.”

And as for being in Richmond, she said, “I love it. I really love it. The city and the company, as well, because they have really nice dancers, as professionals and as humans. So, I enjoy being here.”

The future? She does not know. She hopes to return to Ukraine soon, perhaps after Christmas, for a short visit. Beyond that, she’s not certain of much of anything, including if the situation will be better at home sooner rather than later.

“We all hope that it will,” she said, “but I’m not sure.”
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Washington Capitals star Alex Ovechkin scored his 801st and 802nd career goals Friday against the visiting Winnipeg Jets, passing Detroit Red Wings great Gordie Howe for second place on the NHL’s all-time list.

Ovechkin, 37, drew within 93 of breaking Wayne Gretzky’s all-time record of 894 goals.

Ovechkin’s second tally Friday night came into an empty net with exactly one minute left. The goal, from above the left circle just inside the blue line, capped Washington’s 4-1 win.

“It’s nice to get it done at home in front of our house, family and friends,” Ovechkin said postgame. “It’s a great feeling. It’s a tremendous feeling. We just have to keep going and we’ll see what’s going to happen.”

The Capitals played a video on the stadium screen from Mark Howe, Gordie’s son and himself a Hall of Fame hockey player.

Mark Howe said, “I’ve had the opportunity to watch you play so many games as a scout, and you’ve been a pleasure to watch. You’re one of very few people in this game to me to bring a wow factor. You embrace the fans. You’re everything that my mother and father would be very proud of. I know if they were here today they would be at this hockey game. They would be the first ones to congratulate you. Congratulations — job well done. And now it’s time to set new goals for (passing Gretzky).”

With time winding down in a scoreless first period, Dylan Strome entered the offensive zone and left a drop pass for a trailing Ovechkin, whose snap shot beat Winnipeg goalie David Rittich five-hole at the 18:22 mark.

Ovechkin has 22 goals in 36 games this season. He became the third player to reach 800 goals when he notched a hat trick on Dec. 13 in a road win over the Chicago Blackhawks.
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After being arrested for creating antigovernment propaganda in 2010, the Iranian director Jafar Panahi was banned from making films for 20 years.

Since then, he’s made five widely acclaimed features.

His latest, No Bears, opens soon in U.S. theaters while Panahi is in prison.

In July, Panahi went to the Tehran prosecutor’s office to inquire about the arrest of Mohammad Rasoulof, a filmmaker detained in the government’s crackdown on protests.

Panahi himself was arrested and, on a decade-old charge, sentenced to six years in jail.

Panahi’s films, made in Iran without government approval, are sly feats of artistic resistance. He plays himself in meta self-portraitures that clandestinely capture the mechanics of Iranian society with a humanity both playful and devastating. Panahi made This is Not a Film in his apartment. Taxi was shot almost entirely inside a car, with a smiling Panahi playing the driver and picking up passengers along the way.

In No Bears, Panahi plays a fictionalized version of himself while making a film in a rural town along the Iran-Turkey border. It’s one of the most acclaimed films of the year.

The New York Times and The Associated Press named it one of the top 10 films of the year. Film critic Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times called No Bears 2022’s best movie.

No Bears is landing at a time when the Iranian film community is increasingly ensnarled in a harsh government crackdown. A week after No Bears premiered at the Venice Film Festival, with Panahi already behind bars, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died while being held by Iran’s morality police. Her death sparked three months of women-led protests, still ongoing, that have rocked Iran’s theocracy.

More than 500 protesters have been killed in the crackdown since Sept. 17, according to the group Human Rights Activists in Iran. More than 18,200 people have been detained.

Saturday, the prominent Iranian actress Taraneh Alidoosti, star of Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning The Salesman, was arrested after posting an Instagram message expressing solidarity with a man recently executed for crimes allegedly committed during the protests.

In the outcry that followed Alidoosti’s arrest, Farhadi — the director of A Separation and A Hero — called for Alidoosti’s release “alongside that of my other fellow cineastes Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof and all the other less-known prisoners whose only crime is the attempt for a better life.”

“If showing such support is a crime, then tens of millions of people of this land are criminals,” Farhadi wrote on Instagram.

Panahi’s absence has been acutely felt on the world’s top movie stages. At Venice, where No Bears was given a special jury prize, a red-carpet walkout was staged at the film’s premiere. Festival director Alberto Barbera and jury president Julianne Moore were among the throngs silently protesting the imprisonment of Panahi and other filmmakers.

No Bears will also again test a long-criticized Academy Awards policy. Submissions for the Oscars’ best international film category are made only by a country’s government. Critics have said that allows authoritative regimes to dictate which films compete for the sought-after prize.

Arthouse distributors Sideshow and Janus Films, which helped lead Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Japanese drama Drive My Car to four Oscar nominations a year ago, acquired No Bears with the hope that its merit and Panahi’s cause would outshine that restriction.

“He puts himself at risk every time he does something like this,” says Jonathan Sehring, Sideshow founder and a veteran independent film executive. “When you have regimes that won’t even let a filmmaker make a movie and in spite of it they do, it’s inspiring.”

“We knew it wasn’t going to be the Iranian submission, obviously,” adds Sehring. “But we wanted to position Jafar as a potential best director, best screenplay, a number of different categories. And we also believe the film can work theatrically.”

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences declined to comment on possible reforms to the international film category. Among the 15 shortlisted films for the award announced Wednesday was the Danish entry Holy Spider, set in Iran. After Iranian authorities declined to authorize it, director Ali Abbasi shot the film, based on real-life serial killings, in Jordan.

No Bears opens in New York on Friday and Los Angeles on Jan. 10 before rolling out nationally.

In it, Panahi rents an apartment from which he, with a fitful internet signal, directs a film with the help of assistants. Their handing off cameras and memory cards gives, perhaps, an illuminating window into how Panahi has worked under government restrictions. In No Bears, he comes under increasing pressure from village authorities who believe he’s accidentally captured a compromising image.

“It’s not easy to make a movie to begin with, but to make it secretly is very difficult, especially in Iran where a totalitarian government has such tight control over the country and spies everywhere,” says Iranian film scholar and documentarian Jamsheed Akrami.

“It’s really a triumph. I can’t compare him with any other filmmaker.”

In one of the film’s most moving scenes, Panahi stands along the border at night.

Gazing at the lights in the distance, he contemplates crossing it — a life in exile that Panahi in real life steadfastly refused to ever adopt.

Some aspects of the film are incredibly close to reality. Parts of No Bears were shot in Turkey just like the film within the film. In Turkey, an Iranian couple (played by Mina Kavani and Bakhiyar Panjeei) are trying to obtain stolen passports to reach Europe.

Kavani herself has been living in exile for the last seven years. She starred in Sepideh Farsi’s 2014 romance Red Rose. When nudity in the film led to media harassment, Kavani chose to live in Paris. Kavani was struck by the profound irony of Panahi directing her by video chat from over the border.

“This is the genius of his art. The idea that we were both in exile but on a different side was magic,” says Kavani. “He was the first person that talked about that, what’s happening to exiled Iranian people outside of Iran. This is very interesting to me, that he is in exile in his own country, but he’s talking about those who left his country.”

Many of Panahi’s colleagues imagine that even in his jail cell, Panahi is probably thinking through his next film — whether he ever gets to make it or not. When No Bears played at the New York Film Festival, Kavani read a statement from Panahi.

“The history of Iranian cinema witnesses the constant and active presence of independent directors who have struggled to push back censorship and to ensure the survival of this art,” it said. “While on this path, some were banned from making films, others were forced into exile or reduced to isolation. And yet, the hope of creating again is a reason for existence. No matter where, when, or under what circumstances, an independent filmmaker is either creating or thinking.”
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Hundreds of high-profile figures from the global cinema industry called Wednesday for Iran to release actor Taraneh Alidoosti, who was jailed over her support for the country’s three-month-old protest movement. 

Actors Emma Thompson, Penelope Cruz, Kate Winslet and Ian McKellen and directors Ken Loach and Mike Leigh were among a host of luminaries to sign an open letter demanding the star of “The Salesman” be freed. 

“We demand the immediate release” of Alidoosti, “who was arrested on 17 December 2022 and has been taken into custody at Evin prison, Iran, where many other political prisoners also remain,” the letter says. 

Alidoosti, 38, was arrested last Saturday, official media said, after issuing a string of social media posts supporting the protest movement, including removing her headscarf and condemning the execution of protesters. 

The actor is one of the most prominent figures arrested in a crackdown by Iran’s hard-line regime that has seen the detention of lawyers, cultural figures, journalists and campaigners. 

“The Iranian authorities have strategically chosen to arrest Taraneh before Christmas to ensure her international peers would be distracted,” the letter continues. 

“But we are not distracted. We are outraged. Taraneh Alidoosti, like all citizens of Iran, has a right to freedom of expression, freedom of association, and freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention.  

“We hereby stand in solidarity with her and demand her immediate release and safe return to her family.” 

The Islamic Republic has been shaken by protests since the September 16 death of Mahsa Amini in custody after her arrest by the morality police for allegedly violating Iran’s strict dress rules for women. 

At least 14,000 people have been arrested since the nationwide unrest began, the United Nations said last month. 

The United States on Tuesday condemned Alidoosti’s arrest as “part of the regime’s effort to sow fear and suppress these peaceful protests.”  

The open letter came after “The Salesman” director Asghar Farhadi took to Instagram to demand Alidoosti’s freedom. 

Alidoosti appeared in two of Farhadi’s earliest films before he won international renown, “Beautiful City” (2004) and “Fireworks Wednesday” (2006). 

She then appeared in the 2009 film “About Elly,” which earned Farhadi the Silver Bear for best director at the Berlin film festival, before reuniting for “The Salesman” in 2016. 

“The Salesman” won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2017.
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French authorities plan to use an AI-assisted crowd control system to monitor people during the 2024 Paris Olympics, according to a draft law seen by AFP on Thursday.

The system is intended to allow the security services to detect disturbances and potential problems more easily, but will not use facial recognition technology, the bill says.

The technology could be particularly useful during the highly ambitious open-air opening ceremony  with Olympians sailing down the river Seine in front of a crowd of 600,000 people.

French police and sports authorities faced severe criticism in May after shambolic scenes during the Champions League final in Paris when football fans were caught in a crowd crush and teargassed.

The draft law, which was presented to the cabinet on Thursday, proposes other security measures including the use of full-body scanners and increases the sentences for hooliganism.

Organizers and Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin have both argued in favor of using so-called “intelligent” security camera software that scans images for suspect or dangerous behavior.

The use of such a system during the Olympics is an “experimentation”, the draft law says, but could be applied for future public events which face terrorism-related or crowd control risks.

“No biometric data is used, nor facial recognition technology and it does not enable any link or interconnection or automatic flagging with any other personal data system,” the bill states.

The games’ organizing committee said on November 21 that it needed to lift its budget estimate by 10 per cent from 3.98 billion euros to 4.48bn euros, partly as a result of inflation.

Rather than opening the games in an athletics stadium as is customary, organizers have planned a ceremony on July 26, 2024 with a flotilla of some 200 boats sailing down the river Seine.

The banks of the river can accommodate 100,000 people who will have to buy tickets, while another 500,000 are set to watch for free from the street level, according to government estimates.

The draft law is expected to be debated in parliament in January where the minority government of President Emmanuel Macron will need support from opposition groups to pass it.
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