IMAGINE OTHERWISE FILM SERIES: Mermaid (dir. Anna Melikyan, 2007)

December 4th | 7pm | 301 JRR Loosely based on The Little Mermaid, this film tells the story of Alisa, a young girl who has discovered that she has a magical power to grant any wish she desires. After wishing to move to Moscow, her seaside home burns down, forcing her mother to obey Alisa's desires. In the city, she falls in love with Sasha, a conman who sells people property on the Moon, Venus, and Mars. The couple embark on a fairytale-like three-day adventure, with Sasha repeating his erratic behavior every day, introducing Alisa to the chaotic monotony of capitalist Russia. Mermaid represents an attempt to interpretively stabilize an uninterpretable post-Soviet Russia. However, this is not a fairytale with a happy ending. If the earlier films in this series aim include a utopian desire for reimagination and reinvention, it is difficult to find such positive readings in Melikyan's lively, exciting, but nonetheless incredibly dark vision of capitalism heading toward disaster. --- Event Details: https://my.princeton.edu/rsvp?id=1967210