14th Annual Peter N. Kujachich Lecture: Intangible Cultural Heritage: Opportunities and Challenges for Serbia and the Balkans

Lecture | April 1 | 5:15-7 p.m. | Alumni House, Toll Room

Speaker: Sasa Sreckovic, Curator, Ethnographic Museum of Belgrade

Sponsor: Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ISEEES)

Serbia’s adoption of UNESCO’s cultural policy of intangible cultural heritage has given rise to numerous changes in Serbia and brought the domains of cultural heritage, the humanities, and social/economic development into the limelight. Serbia and the Balkans have witnessed considerable opportunities for cultural promotion and visibility. However, there have also been some major challenges in...   More >

European Presidency Speaker: The European Economic Crisis and the Greek EU Presidency

Lecture | April 3 | 12-1:30 p.m. | 223 Moses Hall

Featured Speaker: Nicholas Economides, Professor, Leonard Stern School of Business

Sponsors: European Union Center, Institute of European Studies, Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ISEEES)

The world-wide economic crisis that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers underscored the weaknesses of the European economic and political integration processes. In many ways, the EU became more unified in dealing with the crisis, but in others, it has been weakened, by not implementing EU-wide solutions and creating ad-hoc rules on a case-by-case basis.

Reflections on the Strangeness of East-Central European History

Lecture | April 3 | 4 p.m. | International House, Home Room

Speaker: Holly Case, Associate Professor of History, Cornell University

Panelist/Discussant: James Sheehan, Dickason Professor in the Humanities; Professor of Modern European History, Emeritus, Stanford University

Sponsors: Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ISEEES), Center for Russian, East European and Euriasian Studies (Stanford), Department of History, Department of History (Stanford)

Diamonds of the Night, Jan Nemec (Czechoslovakia, 1964)

Film - Feature | April 6 | 5:30 p.m. |  PFA Theater

Sponsor: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

New Print!


“Nemec’s technique is as emotionally intuitive as it is masterful, purposefully scrambling past and present, handheld realism (a breathless opening tracking shot) and Buñuellian surrealism.”—Time Out

(Demanty noci). A brilliantly stylized, expressionist nightmare in film form, Diamonds of the Night turns the horrors of the Holocaust into existential fear. Concentration camp...   More >

Tickets required:$5.50 BAM/PFA member; Cal Student, Staff, Faculty, and retirees; Children (12 and under), $6.50 Cal Faculty and Staff; Disabled Patron; Non Cal Student; Senior Patron ( 65 & Older); General Admission Youth (17 & under), $9.50 General Admission

Obama in the World: The President and Foreign Policy: Presidency Panel

Lecture | April 7 | 7:30-9 p.m. | Sutardja Dai Hall, Banatao Auditorium | Note change in location

Sponsor: UC Berkeley Extension

President Obama has governed during a turbulent era in American foreign policy. The administration has dealt with the winding down of war in Iraq, the escalation of war in Afghanistan, the continued campaign against terrorism, the convulsions of the Arab Spring and Syria, the tensions of a frayed relationship with Russia, the disclosure of secret surveillance programs, and more. How has the...   More >

Reservation required

Reservation info: Free. Please refer to UNEX 1211. Make reservations online, or by calling 510-642-4111.

Vladimir Putin and the Crisis of a Strong State

Lecture | April 8 | 4 p.m. | 270 Stephens Hall

Speaker: Andrei Tsygankov, Professor, International Relations/ Political Science, San Francisco State University

Sponsor: Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ISEEES)

Putin developed his system for building a strong state by modifying traditional principles of Russian autocracy. This system began to unravel in 2008 and entered into a period of crisis in December 2011. The inability of the system to function in the established mode is revealed in an economic slow-down, political protests, inter-ethnic tensions, elite infighting, corruption scandals, and growing...   More >

The Unfinished Twentieth Century: The Philosophy and Politics of Historical Falsification

Lecture | April 8 | 7:30-10 p.m. | 159 Mulford Hall

Speaker/Performer: David North, International Youth and Students for Social Equality

Sponsor: International Youth and Students for Social Equality

In this lecture, David North, historian and author of In Defense of Leon Trotsky, will examine both the philosophical premises and political impulses that find expression in the falsification of the history of the “unfinished” twentieth century.
In particular, he will focus on disturbing tendencies in historiography in Germany, where leading historians are relativizing and legitimizing the...   More >

Target audience: All Audiences

Open to audience: All Audiences

Late Night Talks with Mother, Jan Nemec (Czech Republic, 2001)

Film - Feature | April 9 | 7 p.m. |  PFA Theater

Sponsor: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

(Nocni hovory s matkou). After his return from exile, Nemec delved immediately into filmmaking. Unlike his generational peers, he did not rely on existing structures and began producing films independently, continuing to develop a personal style without regard for generally accepted rules. Experimenting with digital video formats, this counterpart to Kafka’s Letter to Father finds the director...   More >

Tickets required:$5.50 BAM/PFA member; Cal Student, Staff, Faculty, and retirees; Children (12 and under), $6.50 Cal Faculty and Staff; Disabled Patron; Non Cal Student; Senior Patron ( 65 & Older); General Admission Youth (17 & under), $9.50 General Admission

Russia and Ukraine: Realities, Democracy, and Change

Panel Discussion | April 10 | 12-1:30 p.m. | 223 Moses Hall

Panelist/Discussants: M. Steven Fish, Professor of Political Science, UC Berkeley; Jeremy Kinsman, Former Canadian Ambassador to Russia; Resident International Scholar, Institute of Governmental Studies, UC Berkeley; Edward W. Walker, Executive Director, Berkeley Program in Eurasian and East European Studies, ISEEES; Adjunct Associate Professor of Political Science, UC Berkeley

Sponsors: Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ISEEES), Institute of Governmental Studies, Institute of International Studies

Join a panel of experts as they review the dynamic Ukrainian – Russian Crisis and look at the implications.

The program is part of the ongoing Democracy Symposium.

Socialist Internationalism: Cold War Legacies

Workshop | April 11 – 12, 2014 every day | 223 Moses Hall

Sponsors: Institute of European Studies, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ISEEES), Townsend Center for the Humanities

This workshop explores the social and cultural legacies of Cold War Socialist internationalism. Recent scholarship has focused on the ties between so-called Second and Third World countries since the 1950s and their prominence in international organizations, but little attention has been paid to its effects on the everyday life of people(s) around the globe. What intimate connections evolved out...   More >

Intimate Internationalism: The Performing Arts Ensemble of the Hungarian People's Army Visits China in the Autumn of 1956: Keynote and Film

Presentation | April 11 | 5 p.m. | 223 Moses Hall | Note change in date and time

Featured Speaker: József Böröcz, Professor, Department of Sociology, Rutgers University

Commenter: Winnie Won Yin Wong, UC Berkeley

Sponsors: Institute of European Studies, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ISEEES), Townsend Center for the Humanities

This presentation focuses on a three-and-a-half-month long tour of the Performing Arts Ensemble of the Hungarian People's Army in the Peoples Republic of China during the fall of 1956 -- a history replete with tensions, conflict and betrayal, as well as ironies, beauty and a host of possibilities. The project explores some intersections between memory, oral history, conventional archival...   More >

A Report on the Party and Guests, Jan Nemec (Czechoslovakia, 1966)

Film - Feature | April 11 | 7 p.m. |  PFA Theater

Sponsor: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

Archival Print!


(O slavnosti a hostech). Notoriously “banned forever” by an incensed Czech government, A Report on the Party and Guests is political parable at its most cutting, dryly presenting a society where conformity is the norm and where power is contained not through brute force, but a gentle hand in the back. The revelries of some Sunday afternoon countryside loungers (including such...   More >

Tickets required:$5.50 BAM/PFA member; Cal Student, Staff, Faculty, and retirees; Children (12 and under), $6.50 Cal Faculty and Staff; Disabled Patron; Non Cal Student; Senior Patron ( 65 & Older); General Admission Youth (17 & under), $9.50 General Admission

Pearls of the Deep, Jan Nemec, Vera Chytilova , Jaromil Jires, Jiri Menzel, Evald Schorm (Czechoslovakia, 1966)

Film - Feature | April 11 | 8:40 p.m. |  PFA Theater

Sponsor: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

Archival Print!


(Perlicky na dne). Representing a who’s-who of the Czech New Wave, this omnibus brings together filmmakers Jan Nemec, Vera Chytilova, Jaromil Jires, Jiri Menzel, and Evald Schorm to adapt the stories of Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, whose work embraced the nation’s many outsiders, dreamers, and drunks. Nemec’s piece, The Imposters, follows two old men who regale each other...   More >

Tickets required:$5.50 BAM/PFA member; Cal Student, Staff, Faculty, and retirees; Children (12 and under), $6.50 Cal Faculty and Staff; Disabled Patron; Non Cal Student; Senior Patron ( 65 & Older); General Admission Youth (17 & under), $9.50 General Admission

Socialist Internationalism: Cold War Legacies

Workshop | April 11 – 12, 2014 every day | 223 Moses Hall

Sponsors: Institute of European Studies, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ISEEES), Townsend Center for the Humanities

This workshop explores the social and cultural legacies of Cold War Socialist internationalism. Recent scholarship has focused on the ties between so-called Second and Third World countries since the 1950s and their prominence in international organizations, but little attention has been paid to its effects on the everyday life of people(s) around the globe. What intimate connections evolved out...   More >

Edith Coliver Festival of Cultures: SpringFest on CalDay

Performing Arts - Music | April 12 | 10:30 a.m.-4 p.m. |  International House

Sponsor: International House

The Edith Coliver Festival of Cultures "SpringFest" is an exuberant celebration of life and culture from around the globe. This annual event is held in conjunction with Cal Day, the UC Berkeley campus open house. Attendees are treated to tantalizing delicacies from Armenia to Zambia. Performances of traditional music and dance from all corners of the globe and booths offering information, jewelry...   More >

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Philip Kaufman (U.S., 1988)

Film - Feature | April 13 | 2 p.m. |  PFA Theater

Sponsor: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

BAM/PFA Collection Print


Adapted from Milan Kundera’s novel, this grand romance begins its vaporous plot during the Prague Spring of 1968, an optimistic moment when socialism had a gentler hand. Daniel Day-Lewis plays Tomas, a philandering surgeon who favors “lightness,” a disconnection from the weight of history. His sexual appetite is an aspect of this flight from commitment, and rarely...   More >

Tickets required:$5.50 BAM/PFA member; Cal Student, Staff, Faculty, and retirees; Children (12 and under), $6.50 Cal Faculty and Staff; Disabled Patron; Non Cal Student; Senior Patron ( 65 & Older); General Admission Youth (17 & under), $9.50 General Admission

Europe and the (post-) Yugoslav Space: The Politics of Intervention and Integration

Lecture | April 14 | 12-1:30 p.m. | 119 Moses Hall

Featured Speaker: Branislav Radeljic, Senior Lecturer, University of East London

Sponsors: European Union Center, Institute of European Studies, Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ISEEES)

The first in a series of three Distinguished EU Visiting Scholar lectures

From Western Development Projects in Eastern Europe to Competing Development Projects in the South

Lecture | April 14 | 12 p.m. | 201 Moses Hall

Speaker/Performer: Sandrine Kott, University of Geneva

Sponsors: Institute of European Studies, Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ISEEES), Department of History

This presentation will question the concurrency between Eastern and Western European models of economic development during the Cold War by looking at strategies and practices of technical assistance, as well as development exchanges in an all-European perspective or between First and Second World countries.

Soviet Documentary Film of the Holocaust: Why it was Marginalised and the Case for Reassessment

Lecture | April 15 | 4 p.m. |  Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life (2121 Allston Way)

Speaker: Jeremy Hicks, Reader in Russian Culture and Film/ Chair of the Department of Russian, Queen Mary, University of London

Sponsors: Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ISEEES), Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies, Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, Richard S. Dinner Center for Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union

The events of the Holocaust happened nearly 70 years ago, and mediated forms of testimony, especially camera images, now play an increasingly important role in historical memory of the Holocaust. A wide range films about the Holocaust have been made, and will continue to be made, but they depend on the documentary films, and other camera images, made at the time of the war. While these need to be...   More >

Toyen, Jan Nemec (Czech Republic, 2005)

Film - Feature | April 16 | 7 p.m. |  PFA Theater

Sponsor: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

A key figure in the Czech Surrealist movement, the painter Toyen lived a life as memorable as her work: shunning typical gender roles and taking a gender-neutral name and “way of life,” she experienced both Paris at the height of the Surrealist movement, and Prague under Nazi occupation. Nemec’s portrait merges fictional reenactments with stock footage and images from her paintings, matching the...   More >

Tickets required:$5.50 BAM/PFA member; Cal Student, Staff, Faculty, and retirees; Children (12 and under), $6.50 Cal Faculty and Staff; Disabled Patron; Non Cal Student; Senior Patron ( 65 & Older); General Admission Youth (17 & under), $9.50 General Admission

The Genealogy of the Concept of ‘Crimes against Humanity’: The Allies’ May 24, 1915 Note to the Ottoman Government, its Precedents and its Afterlife

Lecture | April 18 | 12 p.m. | 3335 Dwinelle Hall

Speaker: Peter Holquist, Associate Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania

Sponsors: Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ISEEES), Russian History Working Group - "Kruzhok"

The concept of “crimes against humanity” is most commonly identified with the Nuremberg Trials after the Second World War. But the first use of this term--in a penal sense--had come two decades earlier, in the midst of the First World War, with the Allies' May 24, 1915 Note to the Ottoman Government regarding its role in the massacres of its Armenian subjects. Prof. Holquist's talk will examine...   More >

Martyrs of Love, Jan Nemec (Czechoslovakia, 1967)

Film - Feature | April 18 | 7 p.m. |  PFA Theater

Sponsor: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

Archival Print!


(Mucednici lasky). Men in bowler hats running in unison down cobblestone streets, the curve of a woman’s leg, or a strange encounter between a working-class girl and a carriage-bound society swell: such are the strange visions of Nemec’s Martys of Love, a three-part music-filled ballad to that most uncontrollable of all desires, unattainable love. Deemed subversive by...   More >

Tickets required:$5.50 BAM/PFA member; Cal Student, Staff, Faculty, and retirees; Children (12 and under), $6.50 Cal Faculty and Staff; Disabled Patron; Non Cal Student; Senior Patron ( 65 & Older); General Admission Youth (17 & under), $9.50 General Admission

L@TE: Cine/Spin: Late Nights at BAM/PFA

Performing Arts - Music | April 18 | 7:30 p.m. |  Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

Sponsor: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

Our annual student DJ extravaganza, featuring UC Berkeley students spinning to films from the BAM/PFA Collection. Reception and photo booth hosted by the BAM/PFA Student Committee.

Check this out. No: Czech this out. We lift the (iron) curtain on Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Jaromil Jires, 1969), a cult classic that actually deserves its rep. This surreal cinema fable is half erotic...   More >

Tickets:$7 General Admission, Free BAM/PFA Members, UC Berkeley Students, faculty, staff

Constructive Literature "a la Ehrenburg": Veshch'-Gegenstand-Objet

Lecture | April 21 | 4 p.m. | Dwinelle Hall, Room 160

Speaker/Performer: Ben Dhooge, Visting scholar at U.C. Berkeley and postdoctoral scholar at the Department of Languages and Cultures, Ghent University, Belgium

Sponsor: Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures

Kamchatka: Strengthening Cross Cultural Collaboration through the Use of Indigenous Google Mapping Technologies

Lecture | April 21 | 4:10-5:30 p.m. | Kroeber Hall, 221 (Gifford Room)

Speaker: Benedict J. Colombi, Associate Professor, American Indian Studies Program, University of Arizona

Sponsor: Department of Anthropology

The aim of the mapping project is to develop digital maps that will strengthen cultural heritage and salvage the endangered Itelmen language, spoken in the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia.

Ferrari Dino Girl, Jan Nemec (Czech Republic, 2009)

Film - Feature | April 23 | 7 p.m. |  PFA Theater

Sponsor: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

(Holka Ferrari Dino). Nemec returns to the Prague Spring and his own Oratorio for Prague with this oblique look at memory, love, and politics. Speaking over and interrupting footage from his remarkable 1969 documentary, Nemec inserts the personal into the political, describing his own actions and thwarted love affairs as Soviet tanks moved to occupy his nation. Here, history is not only the fall...   More >

Tickets required:$5.50 BAM/PFA member; Cal Student, Staff, Faculty, and retirees; Children (12 and under), $6.50 Cal Faculty and Staff; Disabled Patron; Non Cal Student; Senior Patron ( 65 & Older); General Admission Youth (17 & under), $9.50 General Admission

Workshop on European Regulation: Comparative and International Dimensions

Conference/Symposium | April 24 – 25, 2014 every day | 8:45 a.m.-5 p.m. | Faculty Club, Lewis-Latimer Room

Conference organizer: David Vogel, Professor of Business and Political Science, UC Berkeley

Sponsors: European Union Center, Institute of European Studies, Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ISEEES)

The purpose of this workshop is to explore the comparative and international dimensions of government regulation, with a specific focus on the regulatory policies and global impact of the European Union.

Workshop on European Regulation: Comparative and International Dimensions

Conference/Symposium | April 24 – 25, 2014 every day | 8:45 a.m.-5 p.m. | Faculty Club, Lewis-Latimer Room

Conference organizer: David Vogel, Professor of Business and Political Science, UC Berkeley

Sponsors: European Union Center, Institute of European Studies, Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ISEEES)

The purpose of this workshop is to explore the comparative and international dimensions of government regulation, with a specific focus on the regulatory policies and global impact of the European Union.

39th Educator Outreach Conference: Liberalism and Its Discontents in Eastern Europe and Eurasia

Conference/Symposium | April 26 | 10 a.m.-4 p.m. | Faculty Club, Heyns Room

Speakers: Kathryn Stoner, Stanford University; Gail Lapidus, Stanford University; M. Steven Fish, UC Berkeley; Paul Sum, University of North Dakota; Jason Wittenberg, UC Berkeley

Sponsors: Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ISEEES), European Union Center

Bauyr (Little Brother), Seric Aprymov (Kazakhstan, 2013)

Film - Feature | April 28 | 6:30 p.m. |  PFA Theater

Sponsor: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

Eight-year-old Yerkin is an immensely resourceful if irascible third grader. He lives in Bulak, a small village on the steppes of Kazakhstan, where his keen observations of grown-ups are sometimes humorous and always honest. Yerkin makes bricks for a living when not in school, where he gets in trouble for shooting spitballs and learns how to recite Lermontov in Russian. At an age when he can pass...   More >

Tickets:$13 BAM/PFA members, San Francisco Film Society members, UC Berkeley students, $15 General Admission, $14 Non-UC Berkeley students, senior citizens (65 & over), disabled patrons

The Kosovo Question: Issues, Official Discrepancies and Consequences

Lecture | April 30 | 12-1:30 p.m. | 223 Moses Hall

Featured Speaker: Branislav Radeljic, Senior Lecturer, University of East London

Sponsors: European Union Center, Institute of European Studies, Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ISEEES)

The second in a series of Distinguished EU Visiting Scholar Lectures