Exiled Russian Journalists Continue Fight Against Putin With Relaunch of Indie News Outlet on YouTube (Video)

Lise Pedersen “Novorossiya” by Enrico Parenti and Luca Gennari, which had its world premiere this week at CPH:DOX, is a rare film that shows the ongoing conflict in Ukraine’s Eastern Donbas region from the Russian perspective.Gennari, an experienced cinematographer, was shocked at the way the war in the Luhansk and Donetsk region, where pro-Russian separatists have proclaimed the state of Novorossiya (literally “New Russia”), no longer received any media attention once the Maidan revolution was over.In 2017, he decided to head to the Donbas region with his camera to see what life was like there.The film follows the parallel stories of a handful of characters, ranging from a communist U.S. fighter from Texas to a young Ukrainian soldier, a captain in the separatist army who dreams of rebuilding the Soviet Union, an opera singer from the Donetsk opera house, two young men from a heavy metal band and two elderly women who live in a bunker.

TV Rain, a youth-focused Russian TV station often critical of the Kremlin that was shut down by state authorities early in March, is continuing in a YouTube version.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is in the midst of invading Ukraine, has found time to give a shout out to fellow transphobe, author J K Rowling. Trigger Warning: This story has details of transphobic statements, which might be distressing to some readers. For 24 hour crisis support and suicide prevention call Lifeline on 13 11 14. For Australia-wide LGBTQI peer support call QLife on 1800 184 527 or webchat.The President in a televised speech to winners of the Presidential Young Artists Awards, claimed that the West was trying to “cancel” a 1000-year-old country and pointed to programs by Russian artists being cancelled across the US and Europe. WATCH: Vladimir Putin says the West has "cancelled" JK Rowling and are now "engaging in cancel culture" against Russia.(Begins at 1:00)pic.twitter.com/fqAin41HpO— TLDR News UK (@TLDRNewsUK) March 25, 2022“They’re now engaging in the cancel culture, even removing Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and Rachmaninov from posters. Russian writers and books are now cancelled,” Putin claimed, comparing the cancellations to Nazi supporters burning books in the 1930s. “Recently they cancelled the children’s writer Joanne Rowling because she – the author of books that have sold hundreds of millions of copies worldwide – fell out of favour with fans of so-called gender freedoms,” said Putin. Critiques of Western cancel culture are possibly not best made by those currently slaughtering civilians for the crime of resistance, or who jail and poison their critics.

Chulpan Khamatova, a leading Russian actress who has also made several international film appearances, has given an interview saying that she has gone into exile in Latvia, following her country’s invasion of Ukraine.

Wilson Chapman editorDuring his acceptance speech at Friday’s ICG Publicist’s Guild awards luncheon, legendary director Francis Ford Coppola made an impassioned plea for the Russian invasion of Ukraine to end.“I confess I met Putin, and I met Zelenskyy who is really a show business guy, his whole government, all of them are actors,” Coppola said during his acceptance speech. “And I know of what I speak when I say, if one word would just be said, one word with the force of meaning: Stop.

EXCLUSIVE: Influential Ukrainian film producer Denis Ivanov, whose credits include Sergey Loznitsa’s Donbass and Oleg Sentsov’s Rhino, says the lack of support from major film festivals for a boycott of Russian culture is tantamount to complicity in Vladimir Putin’s war.