Kino Nights Film Series

Named in the honor of the groundbreaking documentary work of The Kino-Eye Collective who revolutionized the representation of reality in cinema in the 1920s, Kino Nights is a new curated series of themed monthly screenings and conversations at the Melikian Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies. We feature present-day groundbreaking documentary and narrative cinema from Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, contextualized in timely conversations with scholars and artists. Luiza Parvu and Toma Peiu program the series and facilitate the conversations. The screenings and conversations are free and open to all to attend.

In 2025, Kino Nights features bold films that address personal and collective trauma. Our line-up includes documentary and fiction films that touch on historical events that have left scars in the consciousness of the filmmakers, and their audiences. The works we present go beyond the descriptive to evoke the unthinkable and process the shock and horror without exploiting it, by using a distinct cinematic language. They create sensory experiences, spaces of shared imagination and affect that put audiences in fellowship with people, places and events of rupture, punctuated by violence, genocide, or catastrophe that reverberate long after they have unfolded.