The lack of experienced personnel and highly inefficient spending of state funds on filmmaking are the problems that plague the development of the Russian filmmaking industry today, analysts say.
“We have a problem with filmmaking education [in Russia]. In many cases, graduates of our cinematography universities cannot make movies that are in demand today,” Dmitry Golubnichy, publisher of Empire Russia movie magazine, said, adding: “It is better for them to learn at filming sites but not all projects can give the necessary experience [to graduates].”
Many Russians compare the domestic filmmaking industry with the country’s ailing car manufacturing industry, which cannot roll out value-added products and compete with Western auto companies on an equal footing.
The criticism of the Russian filmmaking industry stems from the period of lost opportunities in the 1990s and early 2000s when low-quality films the Russian public associated with junk flooded the domestic market amid total confusion in the Russian movie industry, which found it difficult to recover after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Although funds started to flow into the cash-strapped sector in the early 2000s, filmmakers were unable to produce films that could compete with Hollywood movies.
“It is a complex issue why people with more or less up-to-date experience do not give lectures at universities. It is difficult to expect any good modern results when lecturers of some production departments have no contemporary experience. It is a state problem of how much the government pays for teaching,” Empire Russia Editor-in-Chief Yelena Smolina said.
Iva Stromilova, an executive producer at Bezelevs Film, which helped create three out of the top ten Russian box-office movie hits, including The Irony of Fate: Continued with $49.9 million in Russia and $55.6 million overall, and Day Watch with $32 million in Russia and $38.9 million overall, said the lack of experienced personnel had an impact on the company.
“We need to run after professionals, from scriptwriters to film editors, literally to catch them and come to terms with them in advance. Unfortunately, the entire lineup has a very limited number of specialists,” Stromilova said.
Members of Russia’s TV and Film Producers Association, including Sergei Seliyanov, head of CTB Film Company, and film director Alexander Strizhenov, said at a roundtable discussion at RIA Novosti that filmmaking education in Russia’s core universities such as Moscow State University of Cinematography (VGIK) and St. Petersburg State Cinema and Television University should be seriously modernized to produce competitive specialists.
“A 20-year-old will speak better with 20-year-olds in their own language and so we need young specialists to shoot youthful, fresh and contemporary films. There should also be themes which are not of interest for an 80-year-old person because he does not visit places where young people hang out and does not know the language they speak,” Strizhenov said.
Film and TV producers are also concerned over the low number of qualified specialists.
In Soviet times, some 150 motion pictures and about 80 hours of serials were made annually. Today, the industry makes less than 100 motion pictures but almost 5,000 hours of serials every year. Large advertising and music video markets have also emerged while the number of graduates from film universities has not grown.
Bazelevs Film tries to solve the problem somewhat by hiring foreign specialists and preparing their own staff.
“We have the opportunity to attract some western resources through Timur Bekmambetov (film director and Bazelevs founder), who is present both here and in Los Angeles,” Stromilova said.
“Often we train our staff ourselves. Timur has prepared his creative and professional team, including editors, screenwriters and producers himself. We are satisfied with the quality of our specialists but there is a big shortage of [qualified] personnel on the Russian market,” Stromilova also said.
The Russian government has realized the scope of the problem and has decided to set up alternative film schools, using U.S. film education methods to train lecturers for cinematography universities and enroll students starting in the fall of 2012.
MOVIE AND MONEY
From the early 2000s, the newly-formed Russian movie companies started receiving funds, including from the state budget, to make mid- and high-budget films but in most cases the audience was dissatisfied with the quality of films shown in cinemas. The low quality of films was often in sharp contrast to the large funds spent on their creation.
“Unfortunately, some people earn at the production phase of many films rather than at the stage of distribution. Film budget funds are often looted and pocketed. A movie with a $5-million budget looks … like a $2.5-million budget movie. Such practice is widespread,” Golubnichy said.
“It was a scheme like this: a film producer would announce a $1.5-million budget, receive $1 million from Russia’s Culture Ministry, shoot a movie for as little as $600,000 and pocket the remaining $400,000. After this, he could perhaps sell it to TV companies or show it at cinemas sometimes,” Seliyanov said, describing the mechanism widely used before 2009.
To make the allocation of state funds for the Russian filmmaking industry more transparent, the Russian government set up a new version of the Federal Foundation for Social and Economic Support of the National Cinematography (the Cinema Fund) in 2009.
The Russian government has carried out research to choose eight domestic film companies, including CTB, Bazelevs, Central Partnership and Trite, as the recipients of state aid through the Cinema Fund. In most cases, state funds in film budgets do not exceed 70 percent, while private funds amount to 30 percent.
Despite different opinions on state support for domestic filmmaking, experts and movie-makers are sure the industry currently needs this aid.
“The industry will develop slower and with greater difficulty without state support,” Golubnichy said.
“We are implementing our latest projects through the Cinema Fund. This is a large source of financial support and we use it as an investment fund. We have been the recipients of this support for two years and it allows us to generate cash flow for our current projects,” Stromilova said.
Her opinion was shared by Seliyanov who said that the Russian movie industry could not exist and develop systematically without state support.
“The U.S. film industry is also provided with state aid, although it is not directly financed,” he said.
The financing of Russian movies with only private funds is possible but rather risky, he said.
“Shooting a comedy is not expensive, it is a relatively safe way to invest money. To make an action film costs several times more and you have fewer guarantees that this film will pay off,” Golubnichy said.
Stromilova said that Bazelevs Film had set up an investment fund with Troika Dialog investment company to attract more public funds for film production and give the opportunity for ordinary viewers to invest in film production.
The views expressed in this article are the author's and may not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti
