Today, sources reported on social media that both were provisionally released from custody on bail.
Tag Archives: update
Serebrennikov Allowed to Travel
Monday, January 10, Kirill Serebrennikov arrived Hamburg (Germany) and is directing now rehearsals of Chekhov’s “The Black Monk” at the Thalia Theater. The director was surprisingly allowed to leave after he was convicted of fraud in Summer 2020 and sentenced with a three-year travel ban. Since then he conducted rehearsals throughout Europe only by video conference.
Source: Deutsche Welle
FREESZFE Association works on Emergency Exit Program for Students
The newly formed FREESZFE association announces that European universities will form partnerships to save the degrees of about 150 SZFE students. The Theater and Film University in Budapest (SZFE) has been occupied by its student last year to protest against the loss of independence and academic freedom (see ACAR post). The diploma rescue program “Emergency Exit ” will be supported by the University Mozarteum Vienna, the University of Performing Arts in Ludwigsburg (Akademie für Darstellende Kunst in Baden-Württemberg) the puppetry department of the Akademia Teatralna im. Aleksandra Zelwerowicza) at Bialystok and the Swiss Academy of Drama (Accademia Teatro Dimitri). They agreed to take over fourteen SZFE classes and will recognize the credits they have earned so far. As the epidemiological situation worsened, the association switched to a digital work schedule: courses are held online, projects are developed without physical contact.
The long-term plan is to acquire a building with the help of donations and a foundation and to establish a private democratically run university with an international profile.
Source: freeszfe.hu
Update: Kirill Serebrennikov Fired From Gogol Center
The Moscow city department of culture will not renew Kirill Serebrennikov’s contract as the director of the Gogol Center. The contract ends on February 28. Serebrennikov was appointed as director of the Gogol Theater in 2012 and reopened the venue 2014 as the Gogol Center. The Serebrennikov case started in May 2017, when the Center was raided by the Russian Investigative Committee, followed by a “theatre trial” over 3 years (see also our several posts).
Source: Moscow Times
Hella Mewis Freed
Security officials in Bagdad announced today, that German curator Hella Mewis was released at 6:25 a.m. (03.25 UTC/GMT) in a security operation at Rusafa, eastern part of Baghdad. Iraqi authorities did not give any information about who was behind the kidnapping. No one was arrested during the operation.
Hella is presently under the protection of the German embassy in Baghdad. She is already the sixth foreigner to be abducted in the Iraqi capital this year and dozens of activists have been kidnapped in recent months.
Sources: Deutsche Welle, The Arab Weekly, Neue Züricher Zeitung (German)
Serebrennikov Convicted of Fraud
On Friday, June 26, the Moscow judge gave Kirill Serebrennikov a suspended sentence to three years probation and a three-year ban on leading any state-backed cultural institution in Russia. However, the judge said that the defendants would be required to repay nearly 129 million rubles in compensation for the money allegedly embezzled. Co-defendants Yury Itin and Konstantin Malobrodsky were also found guilty of conspiring to mislead the culture ministry for “personal enrichment” and also sentenced to probation. The fourth defendant, Sofya Apfelbaum, was convicted of negligence.
Artists around the world expressed their solidarity, an online petition in Germany got 57.000 subscribers. The representative of the EU foreign service Peter Stano and Germany’s Federal Government Commissioner for Human Rights Policy and Humanitarian Assistance Bärbel Kofler expressed their demand for a fair and transparent trial.
Sources: The Guradian, NY Times, German Federal Office, TASS