Confronting Amnesia - Frozen Memories of the Russian Gulag

This documentary tells the story the Soviet Union's network of forced labor camps used to imprison millions of citizens. The camps, particularly during the reign of Joseph Stalin, were a tool for repression of political opposition and the setting of millions of executions as well as deaths due to exhaustion, hunger and disease. Filmed on location in Siberia, Moscow, Perm and St. Petersburg, the film tells several stories including the search Jon Utley conducted to learn the fate of his father who was taken from the family's home in Russia in 1936. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Utley was able to uncover documentation of his father's his arrest, indictment and execution order. Utley's father was killed for leading a hunger strike in a Siberian labor camp.