Film Flam
Kremlin backs a resurgent,
State-friendly film industry
Back in the summer of 2005, the Kremlin inaugurated a five-year program, Patriotic Education of Russian Federation Citizens 2006-2010. It set forth “support and assistance in the expansion of patriotic themes in television programs, publications, and works of literature and art... [including] development of the creative potential of journalists, writers, and cinematographers in patriotic education.”
First fruits are in the pipeline. According to a report by the Open Source Center, a CIA-funded research group, this November will see the release of the film 1612, directed by Vladimir Khotinenko and financed ($10 million) primarily by Kremlin ally Nikita Mikhalkov’s TRITE studio. The film is an epic about the Time of Troubles, and its release will coincide with the new November 4 holiday (the Day of National Unity), created in 2005 to replace the November 7 celebration of the Bolshevik revolution, and with December’s Duma elections. The film project is rumored to be headed up by Kremlin ideologist Vladislav Surkov (see Russian Life, Mar/Apr 2007).
Political analyst Vladimir Pribylovsky, in an interview with Agence France Press last summer, said about the film: “The Kremlin needs to evoke this epoch... as the victory of Russian patriots for the sake of its mythology and its ideology.” Putin, he said, “would like to associate himself with the order restored to the country” after the turbulent 1990s – drawing the obvious parallel with the Time of Troubles 380 years previous. [Note: On the eve of this issue’s publication, journalist Pribylovsky’s office was raided by police, likely related to a book he is writing on the Putin era.]
According to OSC, the filmmakers have denied that 1612 is being made on the orders of the Kremlin, but have said they feel art in the service of the State is a good thing. And, if the State has such an aim, Mikhalkov told RenTV, “it should do this deliberately and not coquettishly.” The state-owned TV Channel One is a partner in the film project.
Over the past four years, according to Sekret Firmy, the State has nearly doubled financial support for the film industry, to R4 billion this year. And, in a pattern developed through the State takeover of broadcasting and print media, in the last two years pro-Kremlin oligarchs have been buying up and starting up movie studios. As well, leading directors and producers, like Mikhalkov, Khotinenko and Sergei Bondarchuk, have been fêted with state honors and appointments.
All of this coincides with a resurgence of interest in and success for Russian-made films. According to Kommersant Dengi, Russian films brought in just $1.5 million in the box office in 2000, but in 2006, the total had leaped to $105 million, on the success of such State-friendly films as The 9th Company and The Turkish Gambit. And, after the difficult patch of the 1990s, Russians are streaming back into theaters. Whereas just 11.2 million tickets were sold in 2000, an estimated 150 million tickets were sold in 2006, Split Screen reported.
– paul e. richardson
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