Women’s Right for Sea documentary presented in Moscow

MOSCOW, August 27. /TASS/. The Women’s Right for the Sea documentary’s premiere took place at the Original+ Doc festival of documentary content of streaming platforms in Moscow. Director Anastasia Lomakina told TASS she presented at the festival the film’s first novel -The Wind of Change – about women working as polar meteorologists.
“We present the first episode of our documentary almanac Women’s Right for the Sea. This novel is called The Wind of Change. It is about meteorologists, forecasters, climatologists, about people of this profession. We present it at the Original+Doc festival of non-fiction documentary content of streaming platforms,” she said.
The almanac consists of five short stories, each having two characters: one woman explored the Arctic and went to sea in the early or mid-20th century, the other one is our contemporary. The author draws parallels between their work and lives, and shows what it is like for women to work in the polar latitudes.
The historical characters are: polar historian, ethnographer and the USSR first female algologist (algae specialist) Ksenia Gemp, ornithologist, the first female head of the polar station Nina Demme, the first female scientist in the Antarctica, geologist Maria Klenova, the USSR first female pilot Olga Dobychina and the first winterer at polar stations Irina Rusinova. As for Dobychina and Rusinova, very little has been known about them, and the crew had to work hard to collect materials about them. The first novel is about Irina Rusinova.
“Very few people know about her, <…> very little information about her, but she is a very interesting character. In the 1920s, she was the first female meteorologist at the Maly Karmakuly polar station on Novaya Zemlya, where she wintered. Besides, she was the first woman to sail along the Northern Sea Route on the Alexander Sibiryakov ship,” the film director said. “A unique personality she is, and I think people must know about her. Therefore, we, so to say, are restoring justice and returning this name.” The role of Rusinova in the film was played by Daria Degtyareva from Arkhangelsk, and filming took place on the Kola Peninsula.
A modern character is Ekaterina Zotova, a junior researcher at the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, a climatologist. She has worked in the Antarctica and on the Spitsbergen, and she is constantly involved in expeditions to the Arctic. Based on her experience, Zotova says it is still quite difficult for women to break into professions related to the sea, there are too many believes about women on the ship, plus a well-known opinion that those marine occupations are heroic professions and those heroes are supposed to be men.
“I also have come across typical opinions that mine is a rather non-feminine occupation. However, over the short time that I have been working in the Arctic, in high latitudes, in the seas, I can definitely see positive changes. More girls have been undertaking occupations related to high latitude research. And more and more of them have been rushing to the forefront of these studies, to expeditions, to having the opportunity to do their research “from A and to Z”, to be able to see what they are exploring,” she told TASS. “Every year, more and more girls become my research colleagues.”
The almanac will be shown at various festivals, and further on it will be available on the Smotrim platform. The project was financed by the Regional Cinema Support Fund.