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Russian director wins top awards after release from house arrest
MOSCOW, April 17, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov
has won the country’s top theatre awards a week after he was released from a
more than year-long house arrest pending his trial on embezzlement charges.
The 49-year-old, who was forced to miss the Cannes Premiere of his
acclaimed film “Summer” last year, has long denounced the case against him as
“absurd”.
He continued working remotely since his detention in August 2017 and late
Tuesday he was announced as winner of the Golden Mask prizes for best drama
director and best ballet.
“I hope you gave me this award because you really liked the play,”
Serebrennikov said in his acceptance speech, to some laughter from the
audience.
“I hope the theatre community will also give each other support, like it
supports me,” he said, according to footage broadcast by independent channel
TV Rain.
The play, “Little Tragedies,” a modern take on classic works by Alexander
Pushkin, premiered in the theatre Serebrennikov heads, Gogol Center, after
his arrest in August 2017. Work on it had to be finished without him.
In a surprise decision last Monday, a Moscow court ordered his release
from house arrest but said he must remain in the capital as the hearing of
his case continues. The director and three of his co-defendants are accused
of creating an organised criminal group and embezzling more than $2 million
(1.75 million euros) of state funding for a theatre project called Platforma.
He has insisted the money was used legitimately. This week the court
ordered a second assessment of the project’s finances and artistic merit for
the case, reports said.
Serebrennikov also collected the ballet prize for the Bolshoi’s
controversial “Nureyev”.
The ballet, based on the life of Russian dance legend Rudolf Nureyev, was
pulled just days before its original premiere set for May 2017, but was
performed later that year.
Bolshoi management cited an under-rehearsed cast for the delay but
speculation swirled that it had been pulled because of the investigation into
the director, or the ballet’s treatment of Nureyev’s homosexuality.
Serebrennikov’s detention sent shockwaves through the Russian arts world
and his case became a cause celebre in the West.
BSS/AFP/ARS/1658 hrs