Irina Tcherneva – Visual History of the Holocaust

Irina Tcherneva, born 1982, is a film scholar specialized in Soviet documentary film and fellow researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS / Eur’ORBEM). Being a researcher in the project “Sound archives. European Memories of the Gulag” (CERCEC-School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences/EHESS), she contributed to the creation of the database and analyzed the video-interviews with ex-detainees of the Gulag system. As researcher for the project “CINESOV – Soviet Cinema at War 1939–1945” (THALIM-French Center for Scientific Research), she participated in the creation of the exhibition “Filming the war: the Soviets in front of the Holocaust” (1941–1946) (Mémorial de la Shoah, Paris), co-edited (with Valérie Pozner and Vanessa Voisin) the book “Perezhit’ vojnu. Kinoindustrija v SSSR 1939–1949” [Surviving the war: the filmic industry in the USSR (1939–1949)] (Moscow, ROSSPEN, 2018) and a special edition of the review “Conserveries mémorielles” dedicated to the Soviet war propaganda, 1939–1949 (with Valérie Pozner). As researcher within the project “WW2CRIMESONTRIAL1943–1991” (CERCEC-EHESS), she was responsible for the work package “From the courtroom to the history: the ‘publicisation’ of trials of criminals against humanity” and co-edited (with Vanessa Voisin and Eric Le Bourhis) the book Seeking Accountability for Nazi and War Crimes in East and Central Europe: A People’s Justice? (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2022). She was a researcher in the project “Images of Justice: the Nazis and the collaborators on trial in the liberated Europe” (Labex “Création, Arts et Patrimoines”, University Paris 1) in collaboration with Sylvie Lindeperg, Vanessa Voisin and Victor Barbat. Irina Tcherneva is a translator and co-editor (with François Albera and Antonio Somaini) of Dziga Vertov. Le ciné-œil de la révolution. Écrits sur le cinéma [Dziga Vertov. The Kino-Eye of the Revolution] (Paris, Les presses du réel, 2018), and (with Valérie Pozner, Paul Lequesne and Catherine Perrel) of Ilya Ehrenbourg, Et pourtant elle tourne (Paris, Presses du réel, 2019). She is the author of more than 40 publications (most of them peer-reviewed) on the socio-economic history of documentary cinema, on the history of film audiences and film technique, on the role of visual documents and artworks in World War II and in post-war trials.