Adamska Elizaveta Rakhilkina is a Russian-American filmmaker, visual artist, essayist, and educator based in Berlin. They hold a BFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts and an MFA from the University of Washington, and are currently a Film Directing candidate at Deutschen Film- und Fernsehen Akademie Berlin (DFFB).
Their short film New Flesh for the Old Ceremony won the Best Narrative Short Audience Award at Reeling! Chicago Queer Film Festival, and has screened at NewFest, Vancouver Queer Film Festival, and Wicked Queer. Their latest short film No Refunds, represented by RAINA Films, has screened at Festival MIX México and Rio LGBTQIA+. Their visual work has been exhibited at Allouche Gallery (New York) and Henry Art Gallery (Seattle), and at Academy Award, BAFTA, and Canadian Screen Award-qualifying festivals.
Adamska teaches film directing, screenwriting and directing actors, currently leading the workshops Hot Set: Directing Actors and Camera Under Pressure and Film Director's Process at 90mil Art School in Berlin. Currently, they are a previewer for Interfilm Film Festival Berlin.They have previously taught at the University of Washington as Instructor of Record for Photography and Video. Their essays Can Love Bloom on the Battlefield? Queer Extremities of the Body Politic and Face/Off have appeared at the Trans Studies International Conference at Northwestern College and the Men and Masculinity Studies Conference at Stockholm University. Adamska’s poetry has also been featured in Tough Poets Review print journal.
Adamska's practice examines bodies under observation—of the state, the sex worker, the dead, the algorithm, even God. Surveillance, intimacy and metamorphosis meet on the same skin. They use surrealism to show that political violence and intimate life share the same room—the government is always in the bedroom, the gay closet is always a state secret, the political border is always mapped on the body. Adamska is currently developing their debut feature film.
Their visuals hurt so bad, but feel so good.