OSI Releases Films on Women in Post-Soviet Countries

OSI's Women's Program, the Institute for Social and Gender Policy, the International Gender Policy Network, and OSI partners from 11 countries launched a series of documentary films exploring the lives and struggles of women in post-Soviet countries. The documentaries comprise the 2006 collection “Gender Montage: Films from Post-Soviet Space,” which aims to capture the immense challenges facing women in the former Soviet Union by focusing on a particular country and a single theme—from polygamy to labor migration, to domestic violence and paternity leave.

The 2006 Gender Montage catalog, trailer, and the seven new films in their entirety are available below. The films are as follows:

• Return, on domestic violence in Georgia;
• Elechek, on polygamy in Kyrgyzstan;
• Who Will Sing a Lullaby, on fathers in nontraditional familial roles in Ukraine;
• Kristina and Christ, on discrimination against women in the Lutheran Church in Lithuania;
• New Penelope, on the challenges faced by women in Tajikistan whose husbands have migrated to Russia;
• There Are Women in Russian Villages, which addresses domestic violence and poverty among rural women in Russia;
• Woman’s Happiness or Man’s Dignity, on traditional women’s roles in Armenia.

This is the second series of films from the Gender Montage project, which was established in 2001 with the support of OSI's Network Women’s Program (NWP) to create visual advocacy tools that draw attention to women’s human rights in the former Soviet Union, shed light on the impact of institutionalized and ingrained inequality, and expose the effects of gender stereotyping. Gender Montage is a joint project of NWP, the Institute for Social and Gender Policy, the International Gender Policy Network, the Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation–Armenia, the Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation–Azerbaijan, the Open Estonia Foundation, the Open Society Georgia Foundation, the Feminist League (Kazakhstan), the Soros Foundation–Kyrgyzstan, the Center for Equality Advancement (Lithuania), the Women’s Leadership Foundation (Mongolia), the Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation–Tajikistan, and the Ukrainian Women's Fund.

Gender Montage pairs professional filmmakers with women’s human rights advocates, who provide guidance and expertise. The project also relied on its international advisors, including leading representatives from the Sundance Documentary Fund, Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, Women Make Movies, Internews-Russia, Swirl Productions, and TV Channel Culture (Russia), who provided support to each national film team and selected the films to be included in the collection.

Read more about the 2006 Gender Montage films.

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