About Inna Rogatchi
During her professional career, Inna has worked actively on several paths of literature, history, history of art, psychology, culture and the arts.
Starting her career as a writer, for over three decades, Inna has been a senior foreign desk columnist and foreign editor-at-large for a number of leading Finnish, Scandinavian, Baltic and international media. Continuing her writer’s career, after publishing several notable books, he is currently concentrating on her work as an essayist being published regularly in leading European, American, Australian and other media.
Inna Rogatchi is one of only two women among fifteen leading European politicians (including the president of the European Parliament, the prime minister of Finland, members of the EU Commission, and leaders of the political factions from the European Parliament) who contributed to the book Quo Vadis, Europe? published on the occasion of the launching of the pan-European electoral campaign for the new European Parliament. Fritz W. Ermarth, director of the National Security Programs at the Nixon Centre, and former Chairman of the US National Intelligence Committee, has said of this essay that it “places Inna Rogatchi among the world-class strategic thinkers of the modern times.”
In her capacity as a scholar and lecturer, Inna has created and taught several special courses for universities (departments of history and international affairs), focusing on the inter-weave of history, culture and psychology. She also lectures widely on various topics of international development in many leading world institutions such as the UN, the European Parliament, the Institute of the World Politics (USA), and at many other international forums. For many years, Inna was a senior advisor for the Members of the Parliament.
Actively working in the fields of history of art and culture, material history, modern arts and memorial architecture, arts and spirituality, Inna has been participating in number of international conferences on Cultural Development of Europe, Arts and Humanity, Memorial Architecture, Art, Holocaust and post-Holocaust, and the others.
As an academic advisor, Inna was very busy with advising senior members of the European Parliament, many national European Parliaments and their members, as well as leading international companies and institutions on providing innovative approach to the multi-sided crisis management in the field of international affairs.
Working as a film-maker – being producer, director and author of several critically acclaimed documentaries – Inna focuses on a first-hand portrayal of historical personalities and significant phenomena of modern times. She has worked in the genre of ‘the metaphorical documentary’ and emphasises her belief in the concept of ‘authored film-making’. Among her films is The Lessons of Survival: Conversations with Simon Wiesenthal which has earned international reputation and is critically acclaimed. Additionally to Simon Wiesenthal with whom Inna and her husband Michael were close friends, Inna has portrayed many legendary people of our times in her films, including President Vaclav Havel, outstanding Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, Academician Sakharov’s widow Elena Bonner, legendary Italian judge Pierluigi Vigna, leading American historians Jerrold and Leona Schecter and many others.
Inna is also an internationally acclaimed artist, with many exhibitions held in Finland, Lithuania, Belgium (at the European Parliament), Italy, UK, USA, Israel, Russia, Estonia and other countries, her works are being exhibited in museums, public institutions as well as private collections world-wide. Her special genre is the photo and video-essay based on extensive research, in which she exams the inter-connection between culture, history and mentality. She is twice laureate of the prestigious Il Volo di Pegaso Italian National Arts & Literature Award ( 2016-2017 and 2017-2018).
Inna works also in other directions of many directions of visual arts and design, notably creating musical video-essays and short films based on her and her husband’s art series. Many of Inna’s short films have been acquired by the Yad Vashem Visual Centre and are used there in the Yad-Vashem educational programmes.
Inna was a special guest artist with several projects for the European Parliament including Shining Souls. Champions Of Humanity in memory of Elie Wiesel and in commemoration of The International Holocaust Remembrance Day ( 2017) and The Route in commemoration of the Day of Jerusalem at the European Parliament (2012); at the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the restoration of the famous Campanilla at St Marc Square in Venice; at a special exhibition Homage to Italian Cinema in conjunction with the69th Venice Film Festival; at the VII International Musical Collection Festival in the St Petersburg Academic Philharmonic, and many other special international arts and culture events. More about Inna’s art can be seen at her art-dedicated site, Silver Strings: Inna Rogatchi Art.
In her philanthropic activities, with her husband artist Michael Rogatchi, Inna co-founded both Arts Against Cancer (AAC) and later The Rogatchi Foundation.
Arts Against Cancer was an international charity founded by the Rogatchis whose success for over a decade led to their establishing The Rogatchi Foundation, which is actively supporting international educational, cultural, and charitable activities. The honourable Chairman of the AAC was maestro Mstislav Rostropovich, and among the members of the AAC International Advisory Board were the Queen of Denmark Margreth, Sir Paul and Linda McCartney, Maurice Bejart, Vladimir Spivakov, and many other outstanding cultural and public figures of our time.
The policy of The Rogatchi Foundation reflects the intention of Inna and Michael Rogatchi to reach out to a wide spectrum of people in need, and thus, the Foundation helped victims of the Fukushima disaster in Japan, contributed to the funding for a special training programme for nurses at the Royal London hospital, provides help in educating girls in a school in Ghana, established stipends for teachers in Ukraine, etc.
Among Inna’s public recognitions, she was the first woman and the third person to be awarded with The Patmos Solidarity Award for ‘the hard labour of memory’ ( 2014). In 2013, she was awarded, together with her husband artist Michael Rogatchi by The New York Jewish Children’s Museum International Award for Outstanding Contribution in Arts and Culture, alongside the outstanding musician Evgeny Kissin . In 2015, Inna Rogatchi was awarded with a Special Diploma on her International Contribution into the Holocaust Education by the Chicago Film Festival and the Illinois Holocaust Memorial Museum. In 2017 and 2018, she won the Italian National Il Volo di Pegaso Award for Arts & Literature in Fine Art Photography category.