In May 1986 the Kremlin hosted the Fifth Congress of the Filmmakers Union, a gathering of cinema leaders and Communist Party officials. It turned into a historic event. Mikhail Gorbachev (1985–1991), the USSR's new leader, had declared a policy of glasnost (openness) in the arts and public media, and he launched a set of reforms to modernize the Soviet economy and democratize its political process. At the May 1986 Congress, the film community embraced the reform program and earned the strong support of the Gorbachev administration. Glasnost encouraged a frank discussion of the USSR's many socioeconomic problems, including an industrial infrastructure that had fallen into disrepair and a society experiencing an upsurge of crime and drug abuse. Such matters had hitherto been hushed up in the USSR's controlled media. Gorbachev calculated that a public acknowledgment of the system's failings would aid the reform effort, and he cultivated the support of writers and artists to help promote his program.
Over the next three years, the movie industry went through a series of reforms that were sanctioned by the Gorbachev administration. The changes virtually eliminated government censorship of movies and substantially reduced the extent to which the old government planning bureaucracy Goskino could influence creative affairs. Studios won autonomy to develop their own production programs and to compete in a more open film marketplace. The Gorbachev regime even supported plans to privatize cinema as part of an effort to reintroduce market practices into the Soviet economy.
One immediate effect of the new openness was the opportunity for previously banned or restricted films to find a wider audience. A Conflicts Commission reviewed and authorized the release of approximately two hundred previously banned films, including Commissar . The Georgian director Tengiz Abuladze (1924–1994) made his allegory on the Stalinist legacy, Monanieba (in Georgian; in Russian, Pokaianie ; Confession or Repentance , 1987), in 1984, but his message benefited from the wider release and from the more frank discussions of Stalinism that became possible after 1986.
Documentary filmmakers were among those who immediately seized the opportunity to offer candid accounts of contemporary society. An emerging social problem of the 1980s involved a youth culture infected with drugs and crime. The Latvian director Juris Podnieks (1950–1992) addressed this matter in compelling fashion in his Vai viegli but jaunam? (inLatvian;inRussian, Legko li byt' molodym? ; Is It Easy to Be Young? , 1987), which documents the aimless, desultory existence experienced by many members of this troubled generation.
The most widely debated fiction film of the glasnost movement also took up the issue of disaffected youth. Vasily Pichul's (b. 1961) Malen'kaia Vera ( Little Vera , 1988) sparked criticism for its blunt, almost crude treatment of the aimless life of its title character, but the film also earned the passionate defense of younger viewers who had firsthand experience of Vera's situation. Shot in a rough, cinéma vérité style, the film takes up such sensitive subjects as youth crime and wanton sexual activity. It even graphically depicts sexual intercourse, which would have been unthinkable as screen material just a few years earlier.
The same filmmakers who were so energized by Gorbachev also welcomed his 1991 resignation and the subsequent collapse of the entire Soviet system. Post-Soviet Russia immediately committed to full-scale capitalism, and the film community envisioned an expanded, profitable film industry that would benefit from free-market practices. But they did not anticipate how harsh that market could be.
The cinema moved headlong toward privatization once the Soviet Union dissolved. Over two hundred new film companies suddenly appeared on the scene in
1992, most of which were small capital formations serving first-time investors who hoped to get rich quick in the giddy atmosphere of Russia's "new capitalism." They scraped together enough startup money to make a film or two before the inevitable industry "shakeout" took place. Some 350 features were produced in the first year of this anything-goes situation, and another 178 were made during the second year. But the Russian exhibition market could not absorb all the product. Many of the films never made it to the screen, and the little production companies quickly folded when the venture capitalists went elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the Russian exhibition market experienced its first retrenchment since the late 1910s. The Soviet film industry had not responded to the video cassette revolution of the 1980s, even while Soviet consumers were acquiring VCRs and looking for new product to view. By the 1990s that product was pouring into the country in the form of pirated cassettes and discs. The troubled Russian legal system could not enforce copyright, and both first-run foreign titles and current Russian movies were being openly sold in shops and kiosks, with no financial return to the filmmakers. Customers stayed away from movie theaters, and 35 percent of theaters had closed by 1995.
The industry began to revitalize near the end of the decade through a combination of government subsidies and foreign investment. Directors who had once touted the virtues of a privatized film industry welcomed government subvention for film production in the late 1990s. Certain prestige artists whose work flourished in the international festival circuit learned to cultivate foreign investors. No director proved more adept at this than Nikita Mikhalkov (b. 1945). Characteristic of this co-production practice was his expensive project Sibirskii tsiriul'nik ( The Barber of Siberia , 1998), which had a Russian and English cast, and funding from France, Italy, and the Czech Republic as well as from the Russian government.
Foreign investment and a general upswing in the Russian economy helped rehabilitate the cinema as the new millennium began. Antiquated movie theaters were replaced by modern, comfortable multiplexes, with Moscow's Kodak-Kinomir setting the new standard. Audiences returned to these more attractive theaters, and the government renewed efforts to crack down on digital movie piracy.
In this more optimistic situation, the greatest artist of post-Soviet cinema launched his most ambitious project. Alexander Sukorov (b. 1951) vowed to make a feature film that would, in a single, continuous shot, encapsulate the whole history of Russia, a vision realized in his tour de force Russkiy kovcheg ( Russian Ark , 2002). In an uninterrupted eighty-seven-minute traveling shot, the camera tours St. Petersburg's Hermitage Museum and takes in an array of scenes depicting moments from Russia's past. However, the technical demands of Sukorov's project were such that the film couldnot be made with resources available in Russia. Special technology was developed abroad for the project, and Sukorov had to work with a largely German crew. Thus Russian Ark , which pays homage to Russia, had to be made with European resources. The irony is unavoidable but, given Russian cinema's long, complex relationship with the West, perhaps not surprising.
SEE ALSO Censorship ; Marxism ; National Cinema
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Vance Kepley , Jr.
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