By Vestnik Kavkaza
2013 can be thought to be successful for Russian cinematography. Russian movies appeared to be rather profitable. Vladimir Medinsky, the Minister of Culture of Russia explains it by the fact that new principles of state support of cinema began to operate: “In general last year 6.7 billion rubles were allocated to filmmaking from the federal budget. 6 of these 6.7 billion were allocated directed to support of film production. A scheme of delimitation of budget authorities between the Ministry of Culture and the Cinema Fund began its operation. The Cinema Fund allocates resources for support of box office hits, profitable movies, relying on a prospect of money recovery. The Ministry of Culture supports, first of all, auteur cinema, festival cinema, auteur cartoons, and documentary, as well as student cinema debuts.”
Moreover, according to Medinsky, “previously the Cinema Fund allocated resources at the non-repayable basis; and now it began to shift to recovery of the money, conducting deep expertise of presented projects, estimating its commercial prospects and financing, first of all, the movies which are tend to attract a big crowd. Therefore, money is re-allocated.”
Three Russian movies got into the top-10 of box office hits in the Russian territory in 2013 – Stalingrad, Yolki-3, and Legend 17. At the same time, Stalingrad got 1,672 billion rubles in Russia and became the most profitable Russian film in history and the most profitable movie of the last year in general, sidestepping foreign rivals.
“We have defined topics which meat strategic interests of the state. According to them, the support of film production and distribution is priority for the state. A system of scientific expertise of film scripts which touch on history began its operation for the first time in our country. We know that there are many complaints by the society that a quasi-history film is produced, but demonstrated events couldn’t take place at all. Thus, scripts are sent to a scientific expertise of the Russian History and the Russian Military History Society. The commission includes scientists from the Institute of Russian History and the Institute of General History of the RAS, who give their expert estimation whether a film is historical or science fiction.”
