Mikhail Bashkirov

MIKHAIL BASHKIROV, University of Panteon-Sorbonne, Paris 1, Paris, France, was awarded a Fejos Fellowship in October 2022 to aid research and editing on “A Shaman’s Tale.” A shaman’s tale is a documentary about the Yakut shaman Alexander Gabyshev. In the spring of 2019, the shaman traveled on foot from Siberia to Moscow to exorcise from the Kremlin a “demon,” as he called Russian President Putin. The shaman was soon repressed by Russian authorities and is still in a mental institution undergoing punitive psychiatry until today. Funding allowed the grantee and their co-author, Beata Bubenets (Bashkirova), to finish the editing and post-production of the film. This project began in France, to where the filmmakers emigrated following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It was fundamental for the filmmakers not to interfere with the story of the shaman, so it was filmed in observational style. Gabyshev has a complex identity. He combines elements of paganism and Orthodoxy in his worldview, and his behavior is based on a series of paradoxes. In the course of working on the film, it was crucial for us that the shaman find his own voice and tell his own story as a member of an ethnic minority.