New Eastern Europe Issue 1

Valeriya Unplugged
ANNA Ł ABUSZEWSKA
During an award ceremony for television producers,
the teary-eyed Valeriya Guy Germanika grudgingly went
on stage to accept an award for the best television
series producer of 2010. Guy Germanika was expecting
to be showered with awards for the series “School”,
which shocked the public in Russia. She treated the consolation
prize as a charitable donation given out of pity.
“I prefer to wash fl oors at McDonald’s if the old-timers from the academy do not
consider me a director!” Th e ambitious Guy Germanika said. Perhaps the tears
shed at the TEFIA ceremony had dried by the time she earned the title Woman of
the Year, awarded later the same year by GQ Magazine.
Is Valeriya Guy Germanika just a crazy instigator or a non-conformist experimenter
documenting young Russia? She constantly provokes. Th e tabloid
press covers her dubious exploits, such as her alleged suicide attempt or MTV
fi ring her for always being truant and for neglecting her offi cial duties. Th ey
write about her on-and-off relationships with some hunk and how she casually
claims that “now she will make porn”. Her fi rst experience behind the camera
is perhaps resounding. Valeriya Guy Germanika (then Dudinska) took her fi rst
steps as a fi lm director in a porn studio. She treated this job as an opportunity
to test her ability in the fi lmmaking profession and “to get to know life”. She
studied fi lm at the Independent Film School, Internews. At the same time, she
was learning about animals and later graduated as a specialist in canine studies
from the Agricultural Academy.
Headless plankton in front of the camera
Th e beginning of her creative endeavours was the original documentaries devoted
to emotionally lost teens and children left to themselves by their parents
during the fi rst wave of Russian predatory capitalism. Sisters, Th e Girls (awarded