-----Original Message-----
From: On all aspects of Russia and the FSU
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ruth Kemp
Sent: Saturday, January 16, 2010 6:28 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Gritty teen drama breaks taboos in Russia

Not for the faint-hearted, but A-Level students and teachers might be
interested in this new TV series.

You can watch live Russian TV on this website http://wwitv.com/portal.htm
The Channel One listing gives more information here -
http://www.1tv.ru/anons/16.01.2010/id=153704

Entertainment > Art & Culture
Gritty teen drama breaks taboos in Russia

    * Published: 16/01/2010 at 08:53 AM
    * Online news: Art & Culture
http://www.bangkokpost.com/entertainment/art/165483/gritty-teen-drama-breaks
-taboos-in-russia

After a fight in the hallway, the camera lingers on blood dripping
from a boy's mouth. A slouching teenager boasts of "knocking up a
chick", while his classmates swig cans of beer at break time.

This handout shows a scene from the television drama series "School"
in Moscow. The hard-hitting series directed by 25-year-old film maker
Valeria Gai Germanika that started this week on Russia's Channel One
television, has provoked outrage from teachers and officials.

That's the brutal picture of school life in "School", a hard-hitting
TV drama that started this week on Russia's Channel One television and
has provoked outrage from teachers and officials.

The series, directed by 25-year-old film maker Valeria Gai Germanika,
has been compared to the award-winning British drama "Skins" --
showing a raw, gritty real-life take on teenage pupils as they drink,
smoke and fight, without shying away from references to sex and
Internet pornography.

"Shows like this shouldn't be on television," the head of the Moscow
education department, Olga Larionova, told the city government after
watching the first episode this week, Russian agencies reported.

Communist deputy Vladislav Yurchik told MPs that the show was "a
planned sabotage against our children and young people", and called
for Channel One's director to pull it off the air, RIA Novosti
reported.

The film's director argued Wednesday that she had simply tried to show
the truth about school life.

"I sincerely grieve for the people who are outraged by the show, but
as an artist I can't film it differently," Gai Germanika told AFP,
saying that the show reflects her own school years.

"I'm a post-perestroika child, and school was already like that," she said.

Gai Germanika is a well-known film maker who specializes in
close-to-the-bone portrayals of teen life.

She won a special mention at Cannes film festival in 2008 for her
movie "Everyone Dies But Me" about teenage girls at a school disco
that becomes a traumatic rite of passage.

The school series was the idea of Channel One director Konstantin
Ernst, she said. "He really likes me as a director, my approach, and
so he invited me to be the author."

The 60-episode series has a starry line-up of writers involved in
contemporary Russian drama, including playwrights Vyacheslav Durnenkov
and Yury Klavdiyev.

"I understand that it's very unfamiliar for a national channel because
they usually show soap operas," Gai Germanika said of the show.

Channel One gave "School" an early evening slot and openly promotes
what it calls its "extreme documentary style" as a radical departure
from standard Russian TV fare -- meaning formulaic cop series,
sentimental family sagas and the like.

"No one has shown life at school like this before," it boasted before
the premiere on Monday.

"What do you know about us at all?" the show's trailer asks.

The show portrays the school as run by out-of-touch dinosaurs. A
grey-haired teacher calls students "monkeys", and a 70-year-old
teacher complains that he hasn't encountered a "personality" since the
1980s.

"As a teacher and a public figure, I'm against this series -- and I'm
22," Anatoly from Yakutsk wrote on Channel One's web site.

The channel defended the director in a statement sent to AFP saying
that the show aims to "understand the problems of schools, not to hide
them".

"As for the concerns of the Moscow education department, we would like
to point out that the series is fictional, not a documentary, and it
doesn't take place in Moscow," the channel added.

The show is filmed in a real Moscow school, with some of the students
appearing on screen, Gai Germanika said, however.

The headmistress of the school where the show is made insisted to RIA
Novosti news agency on Wednesday that the show doesn't reflect
reality.

"Just let one of my children try smoking on the school grounds," said
the school head Tatyana Rybina.

The show isn't the first negative portrayal of the education system on
television. A popular sketch comedy show, "Our Russia", features a
school teacher who spends her time dreaming up new ways to extort
money from her pupils.

While the under-funded public school system is nominally free,
teachers are notorious for demanding money to accept students and to
pay for school books.

The headmistress of a Moscow school was detained on suspicion of
pocketing a bribe of 30,000 rubles (1,016 dollars) for accepting a
pupil, the Investigative Committee said Tuesday.




Regards,
Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp