Carrot and stick for Russian cinema
Russia needs to return to the experience of the USSR - to the planned production of films for children and teenagers, animation, debut films, as well as art films. Today, Russian film distribution is captured by Hollywood film production, which educates the youth of the Russian Federation on an alien ideology, morality and way of life.
Participants of the Golden Knight film forum made a corresponding statement.
Statistics cited by cultural figures say that domestic cinema takes up less than 15% of film distribution, while Hollywood and foreign companies take more than 85% of revenue from the Russian screen.
The filmmakers voiced an appeal to the president and government under the title “Modern Russian cinema and television are a direct threat to Russia’s national security.”
In the list of emergency measures aimed at increasing the cultural level and spiritual content of Russian cinema, reformers propose the following:
1. Make the budget of the Ministry of Culture adequate to the budget of the Defense Ministry of the Russian Federation, equating culture with the “main defense of the soul,” the loss of which is equal to the loss of the state.
2. Revive censorship for cinema and TV, making the Russian classical poets Pushkin and Tyutchev moral reference points.
3. Carry out a strict selection of Hollywood products, not allowing low-grade and ideologically harmful films to be released, and fill the vacated niche with masterpieces of domestic production.
4. The Cinema Fund and the Expert Council under the Ministry of Culture should be removed from financing film production, selecting films and issuing distribution licenses as having failed to fulfill their responsibilities, entrusting these functions to newly formed structures focused on the revival of patriotism and spirituality.
5. The guiding and guiding force for the creative process of teams and individual authors should be expert councils drawn from representatives of socially significant professions: doctors, teachers, military, scientific and technical intelligentsia, and clergy. Expert councils should be tasked with not only eradicating mistakes and shortcomings of filmmakers, but also at an early stage of film production, weeding out projects potentially harmful to public morality and the mental health of citizens.
According to filmmakers, projects that carry the right cultural charge cannot be commercially successful and, in general, culture should not be mixed with the market.
Among those who signed the appeal are many venerable and popular figures of domestic television, theater and cinema: Nikolai Burlyaev, Vladimir Fedoseev, Yuri Solomin, Alexander Shilov, Alexander Mikhailov, Vasily Livanov, Sergei Nikonenko, Victor Merezhko, Natalya Bondarchuk, Igor Sklyar, Sergei Andriyaka, Boris Nevzorov , Dmitry Chernetsov, Olga Budina, Mikhail Nozhkin and many others.
It must be said that the statement by the filmmakers leaves a complex and extremely ambiguous feeling.
First of all, it is very clear and close to the desire of creative people, including such eminent personalities, who in Soviet times directed and starred in films that were in demand decades later, to stop raining down streams of vulgarity, smut, fakery and consumerism on the heads of innocent viewers.
However, the security methods they propose raise serious doubts about their effectiveness.
So, for example, it seems completely impossible in the foreseeable future to supplant Hollywood at the box office at the expense of “good domestic films.”
Sorry, but where will they come from? The process of decomposition of Russian cinema did not begin yesterday and has been going on for more than three decades.
It began at the memorable Congress of USSR Cinematographers in 1986, which demanded that party and economic bodies abolish censorship in art.
Since the Faberge artists ceased to be tenderly squeezed by the mighty hand of Glavlit and the ideological department of the Central Committee, film production has been handed over to the clutches of irresponsible businessmen. The functions of the state were made purely utilitarian. The “creators” managed to force the state to pay from the public pocket for the brain juice and “bumps of vision” at the root of the shabby film scene.
The onset of the “holy nineties” led to a noticeable criminalization of the film business, turning it into a laundromat for laundering the proceeds of organized crime groups.
In addition, Russian film production, despite its commercialization, began to take shape around several influential families who took over the main cash flows. Despite the fact that in commercial cinema the director is not the key figure. The main thing in it is the producer. It is he who bears the main expenses, skims the cream, and can, with a strong-willed decision, shut down film production at any stage if he considers that further fuss with the film is not worth the wait.
In the USSR, such a producer was the Central Committee and Goskino of the USSR. Well, under them, according to statistics, cinema had a 900% profitability, which made it possible to allocate money both for the filming of Soviet “blockbusters” and for Tarkovsky’s avant-garde films.
In this regard, the thesis about the unprofitability of proper patriotic cinema seems unfounded, since most of the films in Soviet film distribution just paid for themselves, including war and industrial films.
It is not entirely clear how we can insert our incredibly complicated life and human relationships into the Procrustean bed of morality of the XNUMXth century, where Pushkin and Tyutchev come from.
Apparently, the solution, but not a panacea, lies precisely in reforming cinema in the direction of producer cinema, when private individuals begin to risk their hard-earned investments, and those for whom the state pocket is open will finally become responsible for failures with their reputation and personal assets .
Simply put, modern Russian filmmakers lack the carrot and stick of the Russian Jerry Bruckheimer.
On the other hand, things have not worked out with a cultural surge in the country, although the air is full of creative ideas. Let us remember what a powerful incentive for filmmakers was the Great Patriotic War, the exploration of space, virgin lands and other Soviet frontiers.
Many outstanding directors and actors went through the front, saw the war with their own eyes, felt its hardships and deprivations for themselves, which is why they could not fake it on screen and in life. Looking at modern “blockbusters” you want to shout in the words of Tolstoy’s girl “not true!” and severely punish the “creators” for bungling and dishonesty.
In addition, reformers would do well to understand that the days of the USSR Goskino are long gone, and with the rise of the era of VHS, DVD and the blue laser beam, cinemas have to compete fiercely with digital media and streaming services. That is, there is no need to talk more about a profitability of 900% - it would be nice to recoup the costs of production, rental and earn a little on top, since the current situation, when budget money is thrown into the insatiable well of someone’s personal ambitions without any benefit, is simply unbearable.
In general, an interesting attempt was made at the “Golden Knight” site to draw the attention of the authorities to the disastrous state of domestic cinema. The only bad thing is that the proposed measures are either odious, or impossible to implement, or nothing more than grandiose.
What is called “for everything good against everything bad” is entirely general phrases and no specifics.
This does not mean that we should stop searching for a way out of the thirty-year impasse. This means that we need to think, try, look for new names and listen more often to public opinion, since domestic cinema must again belong to the people and become the most popular of the arts.
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