Welcome to our new series of fim screenings "Doc is Alive" hosted in partnership with the Moscow Film School and falicitated by Pavel Bardin, "Nika" award winner, film-director, producer and script writer, Moscow Film School professor and mentor. The screening will be followed by a Skype Q&A session with the documentary’s filmmaker Hugo Berkeley.

Hugo Berkeley is the winner of a Peabody Award in 2012 for “Land Rush” (one of 7 Why Poverty? films), about land grabbing in Africa. And he received the Tribeca Film Festival Best Documentary Award in 2003 for “A Normal Life” about post-war Kosovo. Hugo is half-American, half-English and lives in London with his half-Italian family.

Film synopsis:

In 1956, America announced a new Cold War weapon to combat the USSR; jazz musicians like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie and Dave Brubeck, along with their racially-integrated band, would cross the globe to counter negative Soviet propaganda about racial inequality in America. But the unfolding Civil Rights movement back home forced these cultural ambassadors into a moral bind; how could they promote a tolerant image of America abroad when equality remained an unrealized dream? This is the story of how jazz musicians fought back, winning Civil Rights a voice on the world stage when it needed one most.

The rights to screen these films are generously provided by American Film Showcase, a program to bring award-winning contemporary American documentaries, feature films and animated shorts to audiences around the world, offering a view of American society and culture as seen by independent filmmakers. Funded by a grant from the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and administered by the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, the Showcase highlights the value of film in fostering understanding and cooperation, dialogue and debate.

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