Functioning of Cinemas in the Cities of the Tobolsk Province at the Beginning of the XX Century .

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to conduct an overview of the functioning of pre–revolutionary cinemas in one of the most remote provinces of Russia based on the analysis of archival materials, chronicle newspaper publications and the advertising component of regional periodicals. The object of the study is stationary cinematographic institutions of the cities of the Tobolsk province, the subject is the peculiarities of their functioning at the beginning of the XX century. In methodological terms, the work is based on descriptive-narrative, comparative-historical, logical and retrospective methods of scientific cognition, the method of historical reconstruction. It describes the formation of urban cinematographies of the province, their technical characteristics and infrastructure elements in accordance with official Russian standards, the conditions of acceptance of buildings, fire safety issues and problematic aspects of the existence of cinemas. Attention is paid to the repertoire content of film screenings, pricing policy, the phenomena of competition among film entrepreneurs, their work with the audience. The scientific novelty of the study is due to the lack of comprehensive regional works considering the specifics of the activities of pre-revolutionary cinematographic institutions in the territorial framework of the Tobolsk province. It is determined that cinema, having arisen at the end of the XIX century as a sporadic form of entertainment for citizens, during the first decades of the XX century it evolved into an important social phenomenon of everyday life and became one of the key factors of transformations that took place in the system of value attitudes and behavioral stereotypes of the population of the region. Stationary cinemas were not only a fundamentally new type of communication for representatives of the urban community, but over time they turned into significant objects of socio-cultural infrastructure and leisure centers for citizens of the Tobolsk province. A key trend in the progressive development of the cinema services industry in the studied region was constructive competition for the audience, during which the owners of institutions improved the infrastructure and regularly updated the repertoire of cinemas, resorted to intensification and forcing the advertising component in the development of their own business.