Contemporary Russian cinema and its world contexts

Abstract

The author of the essay examines the main trends in contemporary Russian cinema, correlating them with similar manifestations in world cinema and, simultaneously, tracing the origins of these phenomena to the Soviet cinematic past. Thus, the essays section devoted to the analysis of manifestations of the Aesopian language in cinema, reveals models of the use of metaphors, symbolic allusions, etc., observed in the cinema of the socialist countries or in Spanish cinema under the Franco regime - as ways of countering censorship bans. In this context, it should be noted that these trends became firmly established in the cultures of the mentioned countries and have been preserved in them after the acquisition of political freedoms.
 The section entitled Utopian Realism vs New Sociality analyses the technique of combining slice-of-life approach with the magic tale canon, opened by American director Frank Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin in the 1930s, known as utopian realism and widely employed in the Russian cinema of the past quarter century, in particular in the stage-to-screen trend of the New Drama.
 The essay also looks at forms and methods of the trend of magical realism typical of the turning points in the historical development of different countries and here exemplified by the cultures of Latin America and the Russian cinema of the 1990s.
 Further, the author analyses the adaptation of Hollywood genre clichs for Russian blockbusters, as well as a more frank representation of social realities in the context of new developments in the sphere of economy.