Russian Russian Presence in the Holy Land exhibition will be officially opened at the Alexander Solzhenitsyn House of the Russian Diaspora in Moscow on November 18, 2024. The opening program includes the All—Russian premiere of the documentary and animated film "Ascent to Jerusalem" (12+).
The Synodal Department for Church-Society and Media Relations will organize a series of exhibitions "Russian Presence in the Holy Land" in 2024-2025 in four Russian cities. The project is dedicated to the tradition of pilgrimage to the holy sites of modern Israel, Palestine and Syria. This is a unique opportunity to get acquainted with the little-known facts of Christian pilgrimage, religious traditions and the history of the Russian presence in the Holy Land, to reveal the deep spiritual meaning of traveling to shrines.
The exhibitions will feature authentic museum items (photographs, rare book editions, coins, lithographs and icons from private collections), as well as multimedia.
Especially for the project, the Synodal Department for Church-Society Relations and the Media, in partnership with the Thomas Cinema Film Studio, created the documentary and animated film "Ascent to Jerusalem". This is a film study of the theme of pilgrimage, which unites two sides of interest in the Holy Land at once: scientific and spiritual. The film will be presented to the guests by the filmmakers — producer Igor Meshchan and director Alexandra Andronova.
Russian Russian Russian Russian pilgrims, the projects of the Russian authorities and the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission for the construction of Russian farmsteads and temples, known today as "Russian Palestine", were given special attention by the authors of the exhibition project. A special feature of the exhibition will be a story about the history of stereophotography in the Holy Land, which is both a photographic chronicle of the life and everyday life of the Holy Land of the XIX century and an example of the most popular souvenir.
Russian Russian Presence in the Holy Land exhibition will feature each item as a testimony to the spiritual path of our ancestors and introduce them to the history of Russian pilgrimage. The exhibition is based on unique authentic photographs taken by photographers of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem, and copies of photographs from the collection of the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society. At the opening of the exhibition, the historian, deputy head of the scientific section of the IPPO, Candidate of Cultural Studies S.Y. Zhitenev, will make an introductory speech.
In Moscow, the exhibition "Russian Presence in the Holy Land" will last until November 29, then the exposition will be moved to St. Petersburg, and in 2025 exhibitions will open in Arzamas and Sarov.
The project is being implemented with the support of the Presidential Foundation for Cultural Initiatives.
The project partners are the magazine "Thomas", the film studio "Thomas Cinema", the Alexander Solzhenitsyn House of Russian Abroad, the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society, the Orthodox Television Foundation, the First Public Orthodox TV Channel "Spas", the radio station "Vera" (ANO Information Center for Radio Broadcasting, Art and Culture "Faith, Hope, Love") and others .
Admission to the exhibition is free.