From Russia With Art: TransCultural Express Getting Ready to Roll

The Brooklyn side of the first installment of TransCultural Express: American and Russian Arts Today, a three-year collaboration between the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Mikhail Prokhorov Fund will include screenings of contemporary Russian films, a literary evening with the Russian authors Masha and Keith Gessen, and an art installation by Irina Korina, between May 31 and June 13.

The Russian side, which takes place mostly in Krasnoyarsk and Novosibirsk, Siberia, includes performances and outreach programs by Illstyle & Peace Productions, a hip-hop dance company based in Philadelphia, April 19-28; an appearance by the writer and humorist Ian Frazier at the Krasnoyarsk Book Fair (Oct. 31 to Nov. 4) and an exhibition by Brooklyn artists at the Krasnoyarsk Biennial, in September. The artists whose work will appear in the exhibition have not yet been named.

The film series, presented as part of the BAMcinématek series at the BAM Rose Cinemas, includes a weeklong run of Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Nostalghia” (1982), as well as “Russian Winter,” a documentary by Petter Rigborn that follows the American singer-songwriter-rapper and music producer John Forté on a nine-week tour of Russia. The screening will be followed by a performance by Mr. Forté. Recent works by Sergei Loznitsa, Alexey Balabanov and Alexander Sokurov are also among the films to be shown.

The appearances by the Gessens, who are siblings, is part of the academy’s Eat, Drink and Be Literary series, and will include readings as well as a discussion, moderated in English by Philip Lopate on June 5, and in Russian by Masha Pyshkina on June 6. Masha Gessen’s most recent book is “The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin.” Keith Gessen is the author of the novel “All the Sad Young Literary Men” and the editor-in-chief of the magazine n+1.

The Mikhail Prokhorov Fund is a charitable foundation that supports culture in Russia. It was started in 2004 by Mr. Prokhorov, a Russian businessman and politician who also owns the Brooklyn Nets basketball team, and his sister Irina Prokhorova.