Research
sarkisovao@ceu.edu
Dr. Oksana Sarkisova is Research Fellow at Blinken OSA Archivum at Central European University and co-founder and Head of Visual Studies Platform (VSP) at CEU. In 2004, she co-founded (with Zsuzsanna Zádori) and in 2008-2023 directed Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, Budapest, currently serving as festival's program advisor. Her fields of research are cultural history, experimental cinema and the use of found footage, memory and representation, film history, ethnographies of home-mode photography and artistic practices of using amateur images. She has published in peer-reviewed journals and collective volumes on film history, nationality politics, contemporary Russian and Eastern European cinema, and amateur photography. She teaches courses on documentary cinema, film history, visual studies, and memory politics.
Dr Sarkisova designed and directed CEU Summer University Programs Documentary Cinema in the Digital Century (2013), Screened Memories: Historical Narratives and Contemporary Visual Culture (2016), Fields of Vision: Memory, Identity, and Images of the Past (2019), and most recently The Power of the Visual: Creative Documentary and Human Rights (2024). She also participated as tutor and invited faculty in the workshop series Cinema Without Borders (by Movies that Matter HRIFF), Summer School on Cinema and Human Rights (Galway), This is Film! 2023. Film Heritage in Practice public lecture series (by Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam), among others.
Sarkisova served as Jury member at several International Film Festivals, including those in Nuremberg, Kyiv, Zagreb, Warsaw, Tbilisi, Linz, the Hague, Ljubljana, Graz, and Vienna. Since 2024, she is an Advisory Board Member of Eidolon Centre for Everyday Photography.
Central European University
A course on contested historical issues in documentary cinema.
Central European University
The course introduces milestone films in the history of cinema from its beginning to the present day along with the institutional analysis of the film industry development, highlighting selected periods, movements, and national cinematic traditions (France, Britain, Germany, Russia, US, Japan, etc.).
Central European University
The course explored how 20th-century visual media – from pictorial photography to digital image-making – constructed the image of the world and of the self in modernity.
Central European University
This course invited students of history and those in related fields interested in visual analysis, memory studies, and audio-visual material to survey classical and experimental documentary films and discuss their approaches to working with found footage.
Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE)
The course provides both theoretical and practical introduction into the critical and perceptive uses of traditional and digital archival materials by news media, fact checkers and propagandists.
Central European University
The course provided a practical introduction to editing short documentary films using archival footage.
ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5568-1788
Books
Sarkisova, Oksana and Shevchenko, Olga. “In Visible Presence: Soviet Afterlives in Family Photos”. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2023. ISBN: 9780262048279 https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262048279/in-visible-presence/
Sarkisova, Oksana. Screening Soviet Nationalities: Kulturfilms From the Far North to Central Asia. London: I. B. Tauris, 2017. https://www.academia.edu/30196904/Screening_Soviet_Nationalities_Kulturfilms_from_the_Far_North_to_Central_Asia_OKSANA_SARKISOVA
Sarkisova, Oksana. Past for the Eyes: East European Representations of Communism in Cinema and Museums after 1989, Budapest: CEU Press, 2008 (co-edited with Peter Apor) https://books.openedition.org/ceup/637?lang=en
Book chapters
Sarkisova, Oksana. “À travers l’URSS avec une caméra : la construction de l’espace dans les premiers travelogues soviétiques.” In Ciné-expéditions: une zone de contact cinématographique, edited by Caroline Damiens, 73–93. Paris: AFRHC, 2022. https://www.lcdpu.fr/books/97BB6214-71E8-44CB-B4C2-B6D50D4A9C8A
Sarkisova, Oksana, and Olga Shevchenko. “Travel, Space, and Belonging in Soviet Domestic Photo Collections of the Cold War Era.” In Cold War Camera, edited by Thy Phu, Erina Duganne, and Andrea Noble, 297–325. Duke University Press. https://www.dukeupress.edu/cold-war-camera
Sarkisova, Oksana. “Soviet Heroes and Jewish Victims: One Family's Memories of the Second World War” (with Olga Shevchenko), in Silke Arnold-de Simine and Joanne Leal (eds.), Picturing the Family: Media, Narrative, Memory. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. https://www.academia.edu/36676363/Soviet_heroes_and_Jewish_victims_One_familys_memories_of_World_War_II
Sarkisova, Oksana. “The Album as Performance: Notes on the Limits of the Visible” (with Olga Shevchenko), in Julie Cassiday, Julie Buckler and Boris Wolfson (eds.), Russian Performances: Word, Object, Action. University of Wisconsin Press, 2018. https://www.academia.edu/37629459/The_album_as_performance_Notes_on_the_limits_of_the_visible
Sarkisova, Oksana. “A History of One Friendship. Vladimir Erofeev and Nikolai Lebedev, from Associates to Rivals” in Joan Neuberger and Antonio Somaini (eds.), The Flying Carpet: Studies on Eisenstein and Russian Cinema in Honor of Naum Kleiman. Paris : Éditions Mimésis, 2017, pp. 367-388. https://www.academia.edu/37073725/Oksana_Sarkisova_A_History_of_One_Friendship._Vladimir_Erofeev_and_Nikolai_Lebedev_from_Associates_to_Rivals_in_Joan_Neuberger_and_Antonio_Somaini_eds._The_Flying_Carpet_Studies_on_Eisenstein_and_Russian_Cinema_in_Honor_of_Naum_Kleiman._Paris_%C3%89ditions_Mim%C3%A9sis_2017_pp._367-388
Sarkisova, Oksana, “Arctic Travelogues: Conquering the Soviet North” in Scott MacKenzie, Anna Stenport (eds.), Films on Ice: Cinemas of the Arctic. Edinburgh University Press, 2015, pp. 222-234.
Sarkisova, Oksana - Shevchenko, Olga. “Soviet Past in Domestic Photography: Events, Evidence, Erasure.” In Double Exposure: Memory and Photography , edited by Olga Shevchenko. Transaction Publishers, 2014. 147-176. https://www.academia.edu/14746083/Soviet_Past_in_Domestic_Photography_Events_Evidence_Erasure
Sarkisova, Oksana. "Sing with Us, Spend like Us! Images of Consumption in East European Musical Films during the Cold War." In Music, Longing and Belonging: Articulations of the Slef and the Other in the Musical Realm, edited by Magdalina Waligorska. Cambridge Scholar Publishers, 2013. 12-27. https://www.academia.edu/7555214/_Sing_with_Us_Spend_Like_Us_Images_of_Consumption_in_East_European_Musical_Films_during_the_Cold_War_
Sarkisova, Oksana. "Soviet Cultural Policy in Musical Theatre and Cinema, 1917-1938." In Die Geschichte der Kulturpolitik. Die kontinentalen Imperien in Europa im Vergleich , edited by Philipp Ther. Vienna-Cologne-Weimar: Oldenburg Böhlau, 2012. 287-319. https://www.academia.edu/4067984/_Soviet_Cultural_Policy_in_Musical_Theatre_and_Cinema_1917-1938_
Sarkisova, Oksana. "Filming a Liveable Past: The 1970s–80s in Contemporary Russian Cinema." In Popularizing National Pasts, 1800 to the Present , edited by Stefan Berger, Chris Lorenz, and Billie Melman. New York-London: Routledge, 2012. 249-266. https://www.routledge.com/Popularizing-National-Pasts-1800-to-the-Present/Berger-Lorenz-Melman/p/book/9781138118393
Sarkisova, Oksana. “Cine-intellectuals or cine-proletariat? Ideological Allegiances and Professional Identities in early Soviet Cinema.” In Words, Deeds and Values: The Intelligentsias in Russia and Poland during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, edited by Fiona Björling and Alexander Pereswetoff-Morath. Lund: Lund University, 2005. 253-268.
Sarkisova, Oksana. “International Loyalties: A/Olexander Dovzhenko's Films in the Context of the Nationality Policy in Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s” In Prague Perspectives (I). History of East Central Europe and Russia , edited by Peter Roubal and Vaclav Veber. Prague, 2004. 237-254. https://wwwold.nkp.cz/_en/pages/slov_pp_title.htm
Sarkisova, Oksana. "Long Farewells. The Anatomy of the Soviet past in Contemporary Russian Cinema." In Past for the Eyes. East European Representations of Communism in Cinema and Museums after 1989 , edited by Oksana Sarkisova and Péter Apor. Budapest-New York: Central European University Press, 2008. 143-180. https://ceupress.com/book/past-eyes
Journal articles
Sarkisova, Oksana, and Olga Shevchenko. “Seeing in Focus: Snapshots of the Visual Turn.” Russian Review 81, no. 4 (2022): 617–620.
Sarkisova, Oksana, “Taming the frontier: Alexander Litvinov’s expedition films and representations of indigenous minorities in the Far East,” in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, 9:1 (2015): 2-23
Sarkisova, Oksana and Shevchenko, Olga, “Searching for a Soviet Past: Amateur Photography and Family Memory”, Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie 131 (2015) (in Russian)
Sarkisova, Oksana and Shevchenko, Olga. “‘They came, shot everyone, and that’s the end of it’: Local Memory, Amateur Photography, and the Legacy of State Violence in Novocherkassk” Slavonica Vol. 17 (2011). https://www.academia.edu/1442079/They_came_shot_everyone_and_thats_the_end_of_it_Local_Memory_Amateur_Photography_and_the_Legacy_of_State_Violence_in_Novocherkassk
Sarkisova, Oksana. “Folk Songs in Soviet Orchestration: Vostokfil'm’s Song of Happiness and the forging of the New Soviet Musician” in Studies of Russian and Soviet Cinema 4:3 (2010): 261-281.
Sarkisova, Oksana and Olga Shevchenko. "Between Elias and Foucault: Discipline, Photography, and the Soviet Childhood." Social Psychology Quarterly 73 (2010): 1-4. https://www.academia.edu/905220/Between_Elias_and_Foucault_Discipline_Photography_and_the_Soviet_Childhood
Sarkisova, Oksana. “Across One Sixth of the World: Dziga Vertov, Travel Cinema, and Soviet Patriotism” in October 121 (2007): 19-40.
Sarkisova, Oksana. “Life As It Should Be? Early Non-fiction Cinema in Russia,” Medien und Zeit 1 (2003): 41-61.
Sarkisova, Oksana. “Archäologie eines vergessenen Konzepts: discursive und institutionelle Entwiklung des Kulturfilms in Russland,” Spurensuche. “Zauber der Exotik”: Aspekte ihrer Popularisierung Heft 1-4 (2002): 64-89.
Sarkisova, Oksana. “Present Perfect or Present Progressive? Temporality in Early Soviet Avant-Garde Visual Arts,” in: Helena Goscilo and Michael Brewer (eds), Studies in Slavic Cultures 1 (2000): 103-132.
Encyclopaedia and Handbook Entries
Sarkisova, Oksana. "Views from the Roof of the World: 1920s Soviet Film Expeditions to the Pamir Mountains" in Valerie Kivelson, Sergei Kozlov, Joan Neuberger (eds), Picturing Russian Empire. Oxford University Press, 2023.
Sarkisova, Oksana. “The Adventures of the kulturfilm in Soviet Russia” in Birgit Beumers (ed.), A Companion to Russian Cinema, Wiley-Blackwell, 2016, pp. 92-116.
Sarkisova, Oksana, “A Sixth Part of the World,” Pamir: Roof of the World,” “In Spring,” “The Court of Honour” entries in Birgit Beumers (ed.), Directory of World Cinema: Russia 2, Bristol, Chicago: Intellect, 2015, pp. 246-248, 318-323.
Sarkisova, Oksana. "Conflicting Pasts: Programming Retrospectives at the Verzio Film Festival." In Archival Film Festivals. Film Festival Yearbook 5, edited by Alex Marlow-Mann. St Andrews Film Studies, 2013. 151-162.
Sarkisova, Oksana. “Vertov the Traveller: a Modern Nomad” in Thomas Tode and Barbara Wurm (eds), Dziga Vertov. The Vertov Collection at the Austrian Film Museum. Vienna: Österreichisches Filmmuseum, 2006, pp. 17-21.
Sarkisova, Oksana. “Grenzeprojektionen: Bilder von Grenzgebieten im sowjetischen Film” in: Die Wieser Enzyklopädie des europäischen Ostens, volume XI, edited by Karl Kaser, Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl, Robert Pichler. Klagenfurt: Wieser-Verlag, 2003, pp 439-467.
