Impressive Cinema Figures Herald Start of New Era for Russian Movie Industry
Today, in Moscow, the government council discussed the results of the outgoing year for the Russian cinema. The figures are impressive. The number of spectators in the cinemas exceeded 50 million, and the industry received an impressive amount of 15 billion rubles from the authorities. For those who make films are going to get new benefits and new financing principles.
Marina Gromova will tell you what else Dmitry Medvedev and film community representatives talked about.
These exhibits are history by themselves. The torn shoulder straps of the operator, who was on the front line during the Great Patriotic War, are under the glass. But, instead of a rifle, he had a camera. Every second soldier was wounded.
Anatoly Krylov, operator. When Anatoly Krylov, operator, was filming, his hand was injured by a fragment. He understood that he was losing the grasp and couldn’t hold the camera. But they had a law, they never, under any circumstances, let the camera fall out of their hands.
Dmitry Medvedev: "Supernatural work. Ahead of everyone".
From the first films and cinematographers, we move, as if in a maze, to the greatest masterpieces of our cinema. It's symbolic that the government council meeting is being held here.
Today, the museum is not only a living chronicle of the cinema history. This is a storage facility, temporary exhibitions, three cinemas where films of the 1920s and 1930s are shown. It was opened in October. The event was not only important for culture but also very timely. The interest of Russians to the domestic cinema is growing. This year brought record numbers.
Statistics shows that this year, more than 50 million people bought a ticket for a Russian film. Today, the film industry is one of the fastest growing sectors of the Russian economy.
Dmitry Medvedev: "Regarding box office results, they have grown. Arithmetically speaking, these are the ceiling figures in the modern history. This year, we released the films the box office results of which exceed a billion rubles".
Attraction, Furious, Viking. These are the box office hitters of the year, and one of the most anticipated, Going Vertical, will be released in a week. The film will be shown to residents of remote Siberian cities on the same day as in Moscow and New York.
In the regions, almost 700 new cinemas were opened this year.
Nikita Mikhalkov, director: "I think the figures speak for themselves. The attendance, what our cinema earns, and interest in our cinema has increased threefold".
Fyodor Bondarchuk, director, and producer: "We can’t help being happy about the figures. We’ve gone a long way, we’ve talked about it a lot. They reflect changes, those vivid, sometimes emotional discussions that have occurred, including at the meetings with the Prime Minister".
This year is also called the year of the Russian animation revival. The cartoons production has grown twelve-fold.
Vladimir Medinsky, Russia’s Minister of Culture: "To date, Soyuzmultfilm film production volume is almost 90 million rubles. For the next year, we formed a package of budgetary and extra-budgetary sources, which is very important, for more than 200 million rubles".
The studio finally got its building. There are a lot of ongoing projects. By the way, they promise that the favorite heroes of Soviet cartoons will return to the screens.
Marina Gromova, Stanislav Ponomarenko, Anton Musikyan, and Irina Vinogradova for Vesti