“Provincial” Cinema on Global Orbits

Abstract

The author explores important aspects in the development of Russian post-Soviet film art, basing on the Ural school of cinema, which sprang into being in 1943 with the start of Sverdlovsk Film Studios. The "golden age" of Ural cinema unfolded in the 1960s-1980s - the span when the Ural cinema traditions were shaped; when this flourishing manifested itself in all cinema genres and trends: fiction, documentary and educational cinema, as well as in animation. Both film professionals and viewers were very much familiar with the names of such directors as: Ya. Lapshin, O. Nikolayevsky, V. Khotinenko; documentary directors A. Litvinov, B. Galanter, L. Rymarenko and V. Volyanskaya, A. Baluyev, S. Miroshnichenko, I. Persidsky and others. Ural school of animation achieved global relevance with the works of such artists as A. Karayev, V. Petkevich, A. Petrov, O. Cherkasova, etc. After facing economic and creative crisis on the cusp of the 20th and 21st centuries, and even passing a stage of "clinical death", Ural cinema had not only survived, but achieved a new avant-garde position within the cinema world and expanded internationally. During this period Sverdlovsk Film Studios lost its monopoly within Ural cinema production with the new studios appearing on the regional cinema map: A-Film, Ural-Film, February 29, Snega, Kinokhronika OOO, Ethnographicheskoye Byuro and others. Post-Soviet cinema arena of Ural ushered in the new names of film professionals, who were the part and parcel of contemporary cinema avant-garde: Alexey Fedorchenko (director and producer), Vasily Sigarev (playwright, film director and producer), animators Sergey Aynutdinov, Nina Bisyarina, Oksana Cherkasova and others.