Watch the full episode. See more POV.

I don’t usually post plugs, but I received an email from the Community Engagement and Education Department from the PBS series POV about the upcoming broadcast of My Perestroika on June 28.  It’s rare that serious films about Russia make it to American television, and promoting PBS in general is a worthy endeavor, so I thought I would help them out. You can find your local time for My Perestroika here.

Unfortunately, the DVD only has an “institutional price,” i.e. a whopping $395 for university libraries.  So PBS is the only affordable place, i.e. free, for the time being.

I haven’t see the film, though I’ve want to. Some friends have seen it and they say it’s excellent. You can also read reviews in the New York Times and the Nation,

Here is a short synopsis of My Perestroika from its press kit,

When the USSR broke apart in 1991, a generation of young people faced a new realm of possibilities. An intimate epic about the extraordinary lives of this last Soviet generation, Robin Hessman’s feature documentary debut tells the stories of five Moscow schoolmates who were brought up behind the Iron Curtain, witnessed the joy and confusion of glasnost, and reached adulthood right as the world changed around them. Through candid first person testimony, revealing verité footage, and vintage home movies, Hessman, who spent many years living in Moscow, reveals a Russia rarely ever seen on film, where people are frank about their lives and forthcoming about their country. Engaging, funny, and positively inspiring, in MY PERESTROIKA politics is personal, honesty overshadows ideology, and history progresses one day, one life at a time.

So tune in. I will.

Update:

For those without PBS, My Perestroika will be streamed online from June 29, 2011 to August 28, 2011 (FYI: the link is dead at the moment, but I assume it will work on the 29th).

Also here’s an interview with director Robin Hessman about the film on PBS Newshour.

Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.