In the video project Cruising Birobidzhan, New York-based Russian artist and researcher Yevgeniy Fiks juxtaposes official propaganda photographs of Soviet-era Birobidzhan (the Soviet Jewish Autonomous Region) with audio of a discussion set in New York in 2016 featuring post-Soviet LGBTQIs considering the (im)possibility of “queer” or “gay” utopia against the background of the real history of Birobidzhan.

The project was featured in Fiks’s exhibition Pleshka-Birobidzhan (2016) at Station Independent Projects in New York. It engaged the relationship between identity, fiction, and history by recreating in an art installation a tale about a group of Soviet gay men who traveled from Moscow to Birobidzhan in 1934.

Watch on yevgeniyfiks.com.

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Virtual Film Picks are inspired by the in-person Friday Night Films at the Wende program series. This selection is part of a curated list of weekly movie suggestions that can be watched at home, in conjunction with #WendeOnline.