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By Meghna Gupta

My Perestroika is stuffed with history, fuller and fatter than a taxidermy Russian bear. The story studiously follows a historical timeline from Brezhnev to Putin. There is plenty of classic Soviet archive, as director Robin Hessman has dug deep into old official state footage. Even its stars are history teachers.

Perestroika, for those of us who were busy drawing hilarious pictures on Dave’s file in GCSE history, means ‘restructuring’.  Fittingly, Hessman has deconstructed and rearranged the conventional history documentary format entirely in this densely crocheted Russian tale.

Whilst history is more than just a veneer, My Perestroika is really about five people who went to the same school, ‘#57’, grew up in the same city, lived through the same political changes, had access to the same media and became very different people with extremely different lives. Borya and Lubya are history teachers at school #57, which their son now attends. Olga, ‘the prettiest girl in class’, is a working single mother. Andrei, far away from old-style Communism, is a wealthy entrepreneur, owning a fleet of shops selling exclusive shirts. Ruslan in contrast is an ex-punk band player at complete odds with capitalism and the changes surrounding him.

The Meyersons - the history teacher duo - are the key to Hessman’s polychromatic vision of Russia. Borya’s dad, obsessed with home movies, provided her with cans of 8mm footage, setting a stunning aesthetic into motion. The trove of home movie footage in the film  is so endless that lined up, the cans would probably reach the moon, lacking only Yuri Gagarin and Laika. Home movie territory usually comes together with syrupy nostalgia. Although the imagery of rosy-cheeked happy Soviet kids fits the bill, the characters reflect on their oblivious childhoods with fond embarrassment interspersed with confusion, rather than idealisation. Each character gives us a slightly different version of history, completely in line with how they have individually adapted to the changes.

Hessman herself has had an unpredictable life, which took her to St. Petersburg in the 90s where she ended up working on a U.S. horror movie at the Leningrad film studios. Fascinated by the USSR, she eccentrically used to subscribe to Soviet Life Magazine at 10, much to her American mother’s dismay. During her 8 years in Russia, she eventually ended up producing their version of Sesame Street. Unsurprisingly, the linear history in My Perestroika combines both the unexpected, the playful and the down right bizarre. Watch out for the kids whose idea of fun was re-enacting Brezhnev’s funeral.

Although My Perestroika is delicately pretty, it is definitely not an easy watch. The carefully knotted detail  of memory, diary and history is demanding. Voices slip and slide through this film as Hessman was determined not to ruin the personal histories with a neutral narrator. It does work, but be prepared to feel like you may need to go back for some revision.

Dir. Robin Hessman, USA/ UK 2010, 87 mins

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