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Isaac Babel Festival

The Isaac Babel Festival (December 9-11, 2004) celebrates a beloved Jewish-Russian writer in performances of music, theater, film, and scholarship.

Isaac Babel (1894-1940), whose 1926 story cycle Red Cavalry gave many Westerners their first window onto the turbulent years of the Russian Civil War, will be remembered in a remarkable series of events on December 9-11 at Smith and Amherst Colleges and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In addition to a production of Babel’s 1935 play Marya, there will be screenings of some of his little-known films and a special area appearance by Babel’s grandson, Andrei Malaev-Babel, artistic director of the Stanislavsky Theater in Washington D.C. All events are free and the public is welcome to attend.

The inspiration for the festival, according to festival organizer Marilyn Smith, was the staging of Babel’s 1935 drama Marya by the Smith College Theatre Department, directed by Veniamin Smekhov. An actor with the acclaimed Taganka Theater in Moscow during the period of its greatest impact on Soviet life and culture (1964-84), Smekhov, who now directs internationally, is in residence at Smith this semester.

"Building from there," says Smith, "we discovered that Babel’s grandson was living in the States, and that by screening one of Babel’s little known films we could highlight Babel’s extensive work in film." Smith, an independent scholar who is currently a Five College Associate, has done a good deal of research on the beloved Jewish-Russian writer whose stories based on Jewish life in Odessa and about Russia’s violent Civil War put a human face on those larger than life events in Russia during its transition to a modern state.

Red Cavalry, perhaps the best known of his writings to Western audiences, was based on his experiences as a war correspondent assigned to Budennyi’s Cossack troops of the First Cavalry Army during the Polish campaign of 1920. Coincidentally, the December issue of The Mass Review features an article about Red Cavalry, Smith notes. Growing up in the city of Odessa, she says, Babel witnessed pogroms; later, the atrocities of war, and finally, the Stalinist terror. Despite all he saw, says Smith, Babel remarkably "developed an aesthetic of joy that colors his work in the midst of the violence being described."

The Festival opens on Thursday, December 9 with a keynote address by Judith Deutsche Kornblatt on "Other as Self: Isaac Babel’s Wandering Russian Jew." Kornblatt, who is Associate Dean for Arts and Humanities of the Graduate School and Associate Chair of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will speak at the Center for Russian Culture, Amherst College, at 4:00 p.m.

Other highlights include a performance of Babel’s play Marya on December 8-12 in the Mendenhall Center for the Performing Arts at Smith College at 8:00 p.m. On Friday morning, December 10, at 10:30 a.m., Director Venlamin Smekhov will be joined on the set by Smith College Professor of Theatre Len Berkman for a discussion of the play.

On December 10, area musicians Boris Kogan and Sofya Shainskaya offer a recital of Russian and Jewish music at Bezanson Recital Hall UMASS at 4:30 p.m. Babel’s grandson, Andrei Malaev-Babel, brings an adaptation of his one-man show Babel: How It Was Done in Odessa to the area for the first time. Artistic director of the Stanislavsky Theater in D.C., Malaev-Babel will remain for an audience discussion after the performance, which takes place in the Cole Assembly Room at Amherst College at 8:00 p.m.

The festival concludes on Saturday, December 11 with a day-long series of events that includes a screening of the 1925 Soviet film classic, Jewish Luck, and a tribute to Babel’s native city, Odessa, featuring Yiddish and Russian folksongs and a slide show of cityscapes.

The festival has been made possible in part with the support of Five Colleges, Incorporated, the Smith College Lecture Fund, as well as numerous departments at Amherst College, Smith College and UMASS.

A complete schedule of events is online. For further information, contact babelfest@amherst.edu.

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