Irina Patkanian, writer and director. In Russian with English subtitles (52 min., 2017).

“Socrates of Kamchatka” blends documentary and fiction to tell a story about a “new Russian” entrepreneur Anfisa and her horse Socrates. From the documentary thread of the film we learn the story of Anfisa during the past 30 years: a happy childhood during Brezhnev’s totalitarian socialism of the 1980s; hard times during Yeltsin’s chaotic 1990s; founding and running a successful tourist company during Putin’s nationalism of the 2000s. In 2010 Anfisa acquired four horses for her company. In 2012 her horses were killed for no other reason, but to “punish” Anfisa for her economic success. One of them was called Socrates.

Socrates’ voiceover is written in the tradition of “skaz” – a Russian subliterary idiom. Humorous and sad, mixing folk lyricism and newspaper verbiage, opinion and fact, Socrates’ subliterary poeticity echoes and subverts the conventions of mainstream discourse.

This film is part of the Ann Arbor Film Festival. Co-sponsors are the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies and the Ann Arbor Distilling Co.