About the Filmmakers
Andrei V. Golovnev
Andrei V. Golovnev took up the post of Director of Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera) in June of 2017. He is a Professor with a Doctor of Sciences degree in history (with a specialization in ethnography) and a Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 2020, he received the Russian Federation National Award in Science and Technology for his contribution to research into the cultural heritage of the Arctic indigenous peoples.
Professor Golovnev received his Candidate of Sciences degree in ethnography in 1986 at Moscow State University; his dissertation title was "Historical Forms of Economy Among Peoples in Northwest Siberia." He earned his Doctor of Sciences degree in 1995 at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Russian Academy of Sciences, his dissertation title being "Samoyeds and Ugrians of Western Siberia: Complexes of Traditional Cultures."
Dr. Golovnev is known for his ethnographic films, which received awards at Russian and international film festivals, including the prize by the Arctic Studies Center at The Smithsonian Institution (1994) and Grand-Prix at the First and Second Russian Festivals of Anthropological Films (1998 and 2000). Since 2003, he has been President of the Russian Festival of Anthropological Films.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
· Siberian Survival: The Nenets and Their Story. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1999, 224 p. Co-authored with Gail Osherenko
Gail Osherenko
Gail Osherenko filmed, produced, and narrated The Dark Side of the Loon in 2007-2008. She lives in Santa Barbara, California and watches loons in Vermont in the summer.
Film making combines her passion for film and photography with her background in environmental law and science. Her first film Arctic Expedition premiered at the SBIFF in 2007.
Now retired, she taught coastal and ocean law and policy at the University of California's Bren School of Environmental Science and Management. She holds a law degree from UC Davis, and worked as an environmental lawyer before moving to Vermont in 1981 and becoming immersed in Arctic studies. She studied and taught Arctic natural resources issues at the Center for Northern Studies in Vermont and at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire before relocating to Santa Barbara in 2003.