Kino Klassika Foundation
About Kino Klassika
Kino Klassika creates programs of restorations, publications, art commissions and events to spotlight Soviet and post-Soviet cinema – a tradition that remains largely invisible to English language audiences.
We build rewarding partnerships between arts institutions, sponsors and artists to identify shared values and opportunities.
We use film and film materials as the lens through which to examine the development of artistic and cultural norms and socio-political policy and design.
Our Story
Our mission is to spotlight the legacy of Soviet film, the remarkable stories behind their creation and the invisibility of those narratives in English-speaking countries.
We see these challenges as not only the barrier of language. They are a lightning rod for a host of differing cultural, political and normative pressures shaping the traditions of filmmaking and art production in both Eastern and Western Europe.
In 2021 we launched KLASSIKI, the world’s first streaming platform dedicated to classic and contemporary cinema from Russia, Ukraine, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Klassiki hosts a permanent collection of films in its Library, from the pre-revolutionary era through to the 2010s, and our Pick of the Week strand spotlights a recent award-winner or crowd pleasing favourite without UK distribution. We curate both in-cinema and online seasons, allowing us to make this cinema tradition readily available to English-speaking audiences, as well as to former residents of the region who hope to maintain a cultural connection with their ancestral homeland.
Kino Klassika was launched in 2015 by founder and actress Justine Waddell to spotlight the Russian film culture she saw to a wider audience. Justine had spent several years living in Moscow while starring in feature film Target (2011) and had taught herself Russian by watching classic Soviet films. This immersion in film culture prompted an enduring commitment to championing the legacy of classic Soviet cinema in the English speaking world.
We have been able to foster strong and long term collaborations with leading institutions within the UK and the regions which we work with. These include the The British Film Institute, the Centre Pompidou Paris, the Courtauld Institute, Georgia Film, Gorky Film, Gosfilmofond of Russia, Institut Francais du Royaume Unis, Lenfilm Studio, the London Symphony Orchestra, National Cinema Center of Armenia, the Barbican Centre, Mosfilm Studio, Pace London, RGALI (the State Archive of Literature) Moscow, Seanse Magazine St Petersburg, the St Petersburg Cultural Forum, the Barbican Centre London, The Bakhrushin Museum Moscow, and The Armenian Institute London.
Our Values
1Preserving and restoring film materials makes them accessible not just to us but to future generations of audiences and artists
2We champion curatorial and research excellence to build bridges of understanding.
3Film re-animates digital and vice versa – we don’t believe film is dead. We believe film and digital coexist as complimentary experiences, stimulating particular modes of creating, digesting and discussing visual experience.
4We are an open forum and we aim to be transparent in our biases – offering up a self-reflective space where practitioners can come together to examine, watch, dispute and discuss films and the normative practices around them to encourage greater understanding between East and West.
5Unswerving editorial independence – we select contributors and projects purely on their artistic and intellectual value. We flag any sponsorship or promotions in all our programmes.
6We support engagement with film from all the territories that make up a part of the former Soviet Union, including pre-revolutionary films and filmmaking.
7Commissioning artists to respond to, challenge and create new work based on the Soviet cinema tradition enriches all film traditions because education empowers creation.
Organisational Structure of the Foundation
Kino Klassika Foundation is an UK registered charity. Our charity number is 1150791. Kino Klassika’s trustees, Professor Ian Christie, Daniel Jowell QC, Roger Munnings CBE and Justine Waddell are ultimately responsible for the governance of the organisation, which is both a registered charity and a company limited by guarantee.
Trustees
Ian Christie
Trustee
Ian Christie is Anniversary Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck College and a Fellow of the British Academy. He is the co-curator of our exhibition at GRAD Unexpected Eisenstein. He co-curated Eisenstein: His Life and Art (Oxford Museum of Modern Art/Hayward Gallery, 1988). Ian also co-edited Eisenstein Rediscovered (1993) and The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents, 1896-1939 (1988). He is the author of monographs on Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger and Martin Scorsese.
Daniel Jowell
Trustee
Daniel Jowell is a leading Queen’s Counsel with particular experience in multi-jurisdictional commercial disputes and competition law. Daniel’s interest to support Kino Klassika stems from his great interest in cinema and Russian culture
Roger Munnings
Trustee
Roger Munnings is currently chair of the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce. Roger was Chairman of KPMG Moscow from 2004 – 2008.
Justine Waddell
Trustee
Justine Waddell is the founder of Kino Klassika. An acclaimed film and stage actress, Justine played the lead in Vladimir Sorokin and Alexander Zeldovich’s sci-fi version of Anna Karenina, Target (2011), for which she learnt the Russian language from scratch.
Patron
Ralph Fiennes
Patron
Ralph Fiennes is an Academy Award nominated actor and film director with a deep interest in Russian theatre and film playing the title role in the film version of Eugene Onegin and the Russian language version of Turgenev’s Two Women.
Team Members
Sam Goff, Editorial Director
Sam is Editorial Director for Klassiki and a lecturer in Russian and Soviet culture at the University of Cambridge. Previously he was Features Editor at The Calvert Journal, and has written on the film and culture of Russia and the post-communist world for numerous publications. At Kino Klassika Sam curates our film seasons and screenings, alongside managing the Klassiki Journal. Email: sam@kinoklassikafoundation.org
Alexia Claydon, Programme Director
Alexia is a recent graduate from the University of Birmingham, where she studied History and Russian. Having lived in Saint Petersburg for a year she is keen to maintain both a linguistic and cultural connection with Russia and Eurasia through film. At Kino Klassika she oversees the programming on our streaming platform Klassiki, and is involved with marketing and press outreach for our film seasons, screenings and projects. Email: alexia@kinoklassikafoundation.org
Dina Kozlikina, Programming & Subtitling
Dina is a native of Ukraine and a fluent Russian and English speaker. She is a passionate musician and pays a lot of attention to composition. “I love seeing the development of Ukrainian cinema. I believe that films can affect people in different ways so it’s important to have good Ukrainian films. I’m happy to be a part of KKF because it gives me an opportunity to get into this sphere.” Email: dina@kinoklassikafoundation.org
Sandra Radenovic, Content Manager
Sandra is currently a third-year student of BA Russian and History at School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, UCL. A life-long fan of film, language, and history, she enjoys learning new things about all three fields through the work she does at Kino Klassika, most of which involves translating and proof-reading subtitles, as well as writing for the Klassiki Journal. sandra@kinoklassikafoundation.org
Contact
General enquiries please contact us at
info@kinoklassikafoundation.org
For specific enquires, please see team members above, and direct to the relevant member.
Our postal address is:
Strand
London
WC2R 1LA
