“Komsomolskaya Pravda”: “Daniil Dondurei: “Russian film industry needs its Guus Hiddink”"
KIT film observer has interviewed Russia's leading culture sociologist, member of the Presidential Council for Cinema and Art and editor-in-chief of Iskusstvo Kino (Art of Cinema) magazine Daniil Dondurei.
- You have come to us from the State Duma where you presented a report. What was it about?
- We were discussing the development of the film industry, including the introduction of electronic movie tickets. In cinemas all over the world a computer registers a person's ticket when he enters the cinema hall. It is advantageous to all, the government, film producers and distributors, creditors, except for the pirates.
- A movie's gross is calculated automatically leaving no loopholes for falsification.
- You are right. The system is so efficient that it has not been implemented in this country in the past nine years. One of our national leaders had to get involved to end the stalemate. When Vladimir Putin asked during a meeting at Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography how much it would cost to equip all of the 2000 Russian movie theatres with the system he heard a shocking amount - six million roubles. That is $200,000, chicken feed for an industry running into the billions. And everybody knows how much is stolen at Russian movie theatres and how much damage it brings.
- Don't you think the introduction of electronic tickets will not let producers of Russian blockbusters report unprecedented receipts,?
- Exactly. I believe that that is one of the main principles both for our economy and our life: to try to know nothing about ourselves. To know nothing about how many tickets are sold, how many films are produced, how many petrodollars are recieved, what money sports clubs are bought with. To know nothing! That is the essence of our life, when one can go to an official and fix everything up. And we end up with 70 experts, deputy ministers and officials sitting in the Duma and discussing a paltry question, the answer for which is evident. I do not believe that the issue would be resolved at once. A continuous opposition will begin, but this is still better than what Chekhov wrote in one of his stories, that in two or three hundred years there would be better people. Seems like we have to wait till these better people come and introduce such a trifle as the electronic ticket.
"They should have asked for more than a billion"
- Serious issues are resolved much faster. When the prime minister met with members of the Presidential Council for Cinema they proposed a special cinematography development fund and asked for as much as $1 billion for it from the state budget. That equals state support in ten years! They said that the huge sum was needed to make Russian film industry fully competitive with Hollywood. I wonder if one billion is enough and if they should have asked for more?
- A good idea! You should have suggested this to the idea's masterminds. State support now totals about $100 million. They should have asked for a hundred rather than nine times more. Or even for a quarter of the budget. But money will evidently change nothing.
- How will cash investment affect the Russian film industry? Will it make a movie starring Sergei Bezrukov equal in ticket sales to a movie starring Brad Pitt? Will the TNT channel produce a "House M.D." instead of a "Sasha + Masha" family sitcom? Will Vladimir Bortko make a better film than James Cameron? What will happen?
- Those who lobbied for the idea believe that Vladimir Bortko is better than James Cameron as he produces movies in Russian which make him a greater master.
- Great. But why shall we compare ourselves with Hollywood?
- If an athlete somewhere in Syzran is running a race, he is striving for the results of a world running champion.
- Well, he doesn't claim that he is better than the champion.
- You are right. At least he doesn't hate him at the moment. And our movie makers hate Hollywood and criticise their American counterparts. I reply that the industry is very diverse. There are masterpieces and wonderful action movies, astonishing animated and aesthetically advanced movies. "The Limits of Control" by Jim Jarmush, released recently, is one of them. Hate is stupid and dangerous.
- And disadvantageous! The Walt Disney Company has made timid efforts recently to revive Russian children's movie industry that is currently in ruins. I mean "The Book of Masters", the first Russian-language movie by Disney.
- That is the strategy that many Hollywood film studios use. They start producing films in the local languages in prospective countries. They understand how important it is and contribute much to the development of capitalism in Russia.
- However, the artistic outcome leaves much to be desired.
- On the other hand, the box-office outcome is good. They are moving in the right direction. Children's movies are expensive. Russian companies do not want to film. In fact, many world blockbusters are childrens' movies with multi-million budgets.
Latin America falls far behind Russia by number of television series
- So, American companies want to produce American movies in the Russian language, since there is demand for them in the market. By the way, 15 to 20 out of 30 commercially successful movies in Japan are Japanese. The audience demands native movies and that is the way Hollywood is reacting to it.
- Our market is simply not able to cope with 30 blockbusters. There are no modern movie theatres in medium and small towns with under 300,000 residents, which account for a half of the country's total population.
- These are big towns by American standards!
- By Scandinavian standards these are megalopolises! And there is not a place to watch a movie in there. Not even the seven Russian blockbusters released this year: "The Inhabited Island", "Lyubov Morkov 2", "The Best Movie 2", "Taras Bulba", "The Hipsters" and others. Let us imagine a large fortified fortress that opens four small windows from December 27 to January 12 and one or two additional windows in summer. The Soviet film industry was fantastically protected. In the Soviet Union, only seven American movies were released annually, subject to the Communist Party Central Committee's approval. An eighth movie could be released only on Brezhnev's personal instruction. The number of such movies reaches 170 now!
- After all these, you reproach them with their hate! And we have not touched upon the pet subject of television yet.
- American television is undergoing a revolution. Many wonderful TV series have been produced after "Lost" and "House M.D." Independent American film makers have started producing high-quality series, I daresay, motion pictures. There is nothing like this in Russia, our TV channels are too greedy. They feel good as they are, and do not want to spend any more. Russian TV series are very cheap. A series of "Lost" can cost up to $7 billion. Can you imagine this in Russia?
- How much does a Russian TV series, filmed with bad actors in plywood scenery, cost?
- From $150,000 to $700,000...
- Meanwhile, "The Last Hero" survival TV show is filmed on tropical islands and features the popular Ksenia Sobchak. They simply do not want to spend on either television motion pictures, that, we have to confess, have earlier been at a high level in Russia, or children's movies.
- I believe that our TV channels will soon be confronted by a crisis. I hope they do. I mean a content crisis rather than an economic one.
- Do you mean that when they colourise all the old movies and exhaust all the ideas they will come up with something new to fascinate us?
- Well, it will take them rather long to colourise all of the 9,000 Soviet-era movies. Konstantin Ernst, chief of Channel One and the most forward-looking leader of Russian television, judging by his latest interview, is already thinking of what to do next. He changed the channel's content in the summer and started broadcasting wonderful American TV series at prime time. One does not have to stay awake till 3 a.m. to watch them anymore. Our television usually broadcasts good movies after the so-called rating madness ends, that is, after midnight, when the carriage turns into a pumpkin, when television staff become kind-hearted and well-educated and broadcast wonderful movies. Our night TV schedule is one the best in the world. Actually, we hold records in two aspects. First, Russia is the world's champion by the number of TV series, to say nothing of their quality: Russian ten federal TV channels broadcast 70 various series a day, not including the NTV Plus satellite television. Latin America falls far behind us. Second, our night TV schedule is very high in its aesthetic value. Thus, one should sleep in daytime and watch the TV at night. I hope I will not put an evil eye on him if I say that Konstantin Ernst is thinking of how to change the situation. And as is usual for Russian television, when he does something good, others start taking it over.
- I do not believe that this will change the situation substantially. Konstantin Ernst has to work with dilettantes.
- That is a problem and is related to education quality. The Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography has been considered a talent incubator for 90 years but needs renovation. I believe that private cinema schools will soon emerge, since the state ones fail to perform their role. We all know what happened to oil production. Nobody invented oligarchs, state oil companies simply could not perform their duties. The same thing will happen in the film industry. Our producers will soon realise that it is easier to invite a foreign specialist rather than go to the trouble of working with Russian ones. Guus Hiddink is doing great even without speaking Russian. He has swiftly proved that he loves Russia and understands it as well as we do.
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Film industry revenues
USA - $10 billion in the U.S. and $9.8 billion abroad.
Russia - $860 million in 2008, with Russian movies accounting for $230 million.
Stas Tyrkin
