Author’s Note

The following text was delivered as a response to a screening of Spice Boyz (Vladimir Zinkevich, 2020) held at the University of Pittsburgh’s annual Russian Film Symposium in May 2021. I have left the text in its original form, which means that two shattering events that have occurred in the interim go unaddressed here: the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the passing of Denis Saltykov. The former raises a host of geopolitical issues that will have to remain beyond the scope of this brief response, although Belarus’s initial support of the Russian invasion suggests a number of retrospective extensions to the interpretation of Spice Boyz offered here. The latter is a source of profound personal sadness. Denis was a remarkable PhD student in the Film and Media Studies Program as well as the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh. When he invited me to respond to this screening of Spice Boyz that he had organized along with a number of connected symposium events concerning Russian horror, it was a true pleasure to accept his generous invitation. I had been lucky to teach Denis in a graduate seminar on the horror film, so I already knew him as one of the best, brightest, and kindest young scholars that I have ever had the chance to meet. He had already produced important published work on the horror film in a Russian context, and I knew his programming for this symposium would be even more significant. After the symposium concluded, I connected Denis with editor Kristopher Woofter and the wonderful horror studies community at Monstrum in the hopes that a published record of Denis’s efforts could be made more widely available. Denis was hard at work on this project when he died suddenly and unexpectedly. The personal loss for those who knew him, as well as the professional loss of a voice that would have doubtlessly transformed our understanding of global horror studies, cannot be replaced. But I am grateful to Denis’s wife, the scholar Eva Ivanilova, for her strength and resolve to make this dossier a reality and to honor Denis in the process. In the short time I knew Denis, he had already taught me so much. I am deeply saddened by the loss of all those future conversations with him that are no longer possible. But I know that the publication of this dossier would have made him proud, and that the dossier’s contents will allow us all to learn from him for many years to come. I would like to dedicate my own text here to the memory of Denis Saltykov.