Note Book

The Russian State Children’s Library is digitizing and uploading to the internet some 16,000 Soviet filmstrips, or diafilmy, ubiquitous here through the 1990s. The filmstrips – essentially stills on 35mm film with captions, similar to a comic strip – were made for home projectors or handheld film viewers. Diafilm was also the name of the Soviet studio founded in 1930 to make the coveted film rolls packaged in colorful round boxes.

Several hundred such “films,” some educational and others based on literary works, are available on the library’s website: bit.ly/diafilms

The Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom, which was created by his daughter Zhanna and is based in Germany, has launched an award, the Boris Nemtsov Prize for Supporting Democratic Values in Russia. Public and cultural figures, as well as journalists, can qualify for the $10,000 annual prize to be handed out on June 12 (Russia Day).