Ages ago Cian O'Connor, I think it was, was curious about how the Russian film industry is making out.
Chris Doss The Russia Journal --------------------------- FEATURE-Russian film industry battles Hollywood Goliath By Clara Ferreira-Marques
MOSCOW, June 17 (Reuters) - A fervently patriotic tale of a soldier's bravery and young love, "Zvezda," or Star, would once have been a sure-fire box office hit.
Instead, the premiere of what was billed as the Russian film of the year was dwarfed by the release of a flurry of Hollywood blockbusters, including the latest "Star Wars" epic.
"We were able to distribute it only because of our connections," acknowledged Karen Shakhnazarov, the film's producer and head of Russia's flagship Mosflim Studios.
"Most of the foreign films are dubbed and prepared here, so we know the distributors. But if I had not been from Mosfilm, I would have had no chance," he told Reuters.
Tucked into a leafy bend on the Moskva river, the sprawling Mosfilm studios were once the centre of the Soviet Union's prolific film industry.
Home to cinema greats Sergei Eisenstein and Andrei Tarkovsky, Mosfilm produced some 100 films a year at the height of Soviet power.
Now, the flagship studios produce at most 30 Russian films a year, only a tiny percentage of which will ever make it to the country's cinemas. Most are shelved.
Mosfilm, whose opening credits still feature its trademark worker and peasant logo, instead covers its costs by producing music, television advertising and low-budget made-for-TV films.
"If Russia wants to become a cinema nation, as it was during Soviet times, it needs to produce at least 150 films a year," Shakhnazarov said.
"Mosfilm is ready for this but we cannot answer for the whole of the Russian cinema industry, let alone finance it."
REFUSED BY DISTRIBUTORS
Russia's film industry has suffered the aches and pains of post-Soviet society, dwindling state subsidies and encroaching Hollywood blockbusters.
And though, after a barren stretch, Russians are returning to movie theatres, few domestically produced films ever manage to reach out to the general public.
"Statistics show that across Russia only seven percent of films shown in cinemas are Russian. In privately-owned cinemas this number drops to two to three percent, not more," said Igor Kallistov of the Ministry of Culture's department of cinema regulation and development.
"More than half the films shown on television, including made-for-TV productions, are Russian. But real cinema is cinema on the big screen."
Director Ivan Dykhovichny, whose films include "Moscow Parade" with German chanteuse Ute Lemper, says Russian films are simply refused by distributors.
"Distributors don't care whether it is a good or bad film. It is tarred simply because it is ours," he told the leading Izvestiya daily.
"They tell us: Learn to film like they do in America! And why should Russia need to film like they do in America?"
One reason, distributors might argue, is cost.
Russian films, shown only or mainly within Russia, are more expensive than their U.S.-made counterparts, as U.S. productions can afford to spread their costs over a far larger audience.
"Cinemas will not take Russian films because rights to show an American film across Russia cost $200,000. Our films, when they have a chance of success, cost over $1 million," Kallistov said.
"There are exceptions, but these are exceptions which must become at least the majority, if not the rule."
FEW RUSSIAN FILMS SEEN WIDELY
Among those who remain successful inside and outside Russia is top director Nikita Mikhalkov, whose 1994 anti-Stalinist allegory "Burnt by the Sun" won the Oscar for best foreign film.
His latest movie, "The Barber of Siberia," in which Mikhalkov appears in a much-criticised cameo as a patriarchal Tsar Alexander III, received frosty reviews and was booed at the Cannes Film Festival in 1999.
Few Russian directors can claim the weight of the well-connected Mikhalkov -- one of a handful of Russian film makers watched widely both nationally and abroad and certainly one of the few masters of Russian cinema still able to gather $45 million to fund a picture.
Director Alexander Sokurov, whose film "Russian Ark," shot in a single take, was the only Russian production to reach the Cannes festival last month, says he does not worry about dwindling number of viewers.
Sokurov, whose esoteric movies are mainly sponsored by European partners and seen by few, says artistic cinema is simply destined for a limited audience.
"There are not many films, but there are films. I am very optimistic," Sokurov said. "In Russia, cinema is seen as an art. In the West, cinema is a visual object. That's the big difference between cinema in Russia and in the West."
Sokurov, whose pictures include "Telets," a controversial tale of Lenin's last days and "Molokh" a film on Hitler and Eva Braun, says his films are aimed at "educated viewers."
"Look at the circulation of Thomas Mann, look at the circulation of (William) Faulkner," he said. "These films demand a prepared, clever and educated viewer. Rembrandt is not for everyone."
But for the Russian producers, actors and directors competing for the attention of the middling viewer who once consumed dozens of Soviet flicks a year, it is harder to battle the facts and figures of post-Soviet cinema.
"Schwarzenegger is on every poster. Should we fight American cinema?" one Moscow daily queried ahead of June's Sochi film festival in southern Russia.
"Our cinema has walked into silent darkness. For most, the victories of Russian cinema are like news from Mars."