SuperAlisa (СуперАлиса in Russian; also written as SUPERӘLİSӘ in Tatar; real name Alisa Khusainova, in Russian transliteration, or Алиса Шамил кызы Хөсәенова in Tatar) is a contemporary/recent Tatar pop(ish) singer, and an extremely individual figure on the Tatar music scene. She sings mostly in Tatar. SuperAlisa’s music is a highly unusual mix of electronica arrangements, traditional Tatar […]
Dilya Nigmatullina (Диля Нигматуллина) is a Tatar singer of pop music. Though she has fewer albums to her name than some of her Tatar pop contemporaries, she has a loyal following and is pretty well known in the small Tatar pop world. Nigmatullina actually grew up not in Tatarstan but in the Russian republic of […]
Albina Apanaeva (Альбина Апанаева in Russian) is a Tatar singer. She performs pop music in the Tatar language, and occasionally in Russian. She also currently works as an event organizer, though she’s best known as a singer—she’s sometimes even called the most popular Tatar pop singer. Apanaeva was born in Naberezhnye Chelny (Яр Чаллы in […]
Irke (Иркә in Tatar, Иркэ in Russian; real name Aygul Minshakirova, Айгөл Миншакирова in Tatar) is a contemporary Tatar singer. She sings mainly pop, with some folk mixed in. She’s also an actress, and both her acting and singing work has taken place entirely in the Tatar language. Irke is from a village in the south of […]
Bibinur (Бибинур; in Tatar the word means “carrying light”) is a 2009 drama film. It was made in Russia but is largely in Tatar, the language of the Russian Republic of Tatarstan. It was filmed in Algaevo (Алгаево), a village in Tatarstan. In 2011, the documentary Bibinur: The Film About the Film (Бибинур — фильм о фильме) was released. The film […]
Hobgoblin (Baubas) is an animated Lithuanian film from 1987. Created by Ilja Bereznickas, it was followed up by several sequels in the early 2000s. The screenplay was written by Bereznickas together with Pranas Morkus, who has worked on several animated films with Bereznickas and is also known for his live-action film work, including the documentary The Age of Czesław […]
The Cat’s Windmill (Kaķīša dzirnavas) is a Latvian short animated film. It is based on the short story/fairy tale of the same name, written by Kārlis Skalbe, a Latvian writer who lived and wrote in Latvia in the years of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union. Skalbe was also a Latvian nationalist and revolutionary, and left Latvia […]
Divers in the Rain (Tuukrid Vihmas) is an Estonian short animated film from 2009. It’s black and white and about a half-hour long, though with very limited dialogue. It was created by Priit Pärn, one of Estonia’s most lauded contemporary animation directors, in collaboration with his wife, Olga Pärn. Pärn’s cartoons are generally not aimed at children, […]
History of Kyrgyzstan (История Кыргызстана) is a series of cartoons telling the history of Kyrgyzstan. (I’m sure you didn’t see that one coming!) It was created in 2017. The series will ultimately consist of 20 several-minutes-long episodes, though to date (May 2017) only 11 have been released. The series’s creators have said that they are currently working […]
The Return (Хайтарма / Qaytarma) is a 2013 Crimean-Tatar (not to be confused with simply Tatar!) dramatic film. It was produced in Ukraine and is in both Russian and Crimean Tatar languages. The film tells the story of the events of May 1944, when over the course of a few days Stalin had the Crimean Tatars […]
We’ll Be Belarusians! (Будзьма беларусамі!) is a short animated Belarusian film. Created in 2011, it’s about five minutes long. It’s the first Belarusian-language cartoon about Belarus’s history. For such a short film, Belarusians has a big plot, and made a big impact. The film tells the story of the entire history of Belarus, from the beginning […]
Malanowski and Partners (Malanowski i Partnerzy) is a Polish crime TV series that aired from 2009 to 2016. It ran for 16 seasons, and there are more than 800 half-hour episodes. The show takes place in Warsaw and is about Detective Malanowski and his partners at the detective agency he runs. The show follows the detectives as […]
