MOSCOW: It is just the kind of film the Kremlin is trying to avoid and the Russian public cannot get enough of. Oligarch, the rags-to-riches story of a Russian businessman, based on the life of the London-based tycoon Boris Berezovsky, is breaking box- office records.
A bitter farewell to the banditry and chaos of the Yeltsin era — with its gunmen, dirty money and dirtier politicians — it took $358,000 in its first week according to its distributor, more than any other Russian-language film. But the billionaire depicted in Oligarch is just the kind of anti-hero that Vladimir Putin’s government is trying to wean Russia off.
Earlier the ministry of culture announced it would significantly increase financing for Russia’s beleaguered film industry, trebling funding over two years, to $47m — a huge amount in a country where hospitals often cannot pay their electricity bills.
However, the money comes with a catch. The minister for culture, Mikhail Shviydkoi, said that preference would be given to films of a patriotic and historical nature, and to films for children. This has been seen as a request for films that send a particular message to the Russian people: that Russia is once again in the ascendant, and that family values and hard work can conquer all.
Shviydkoi’s plan may breathe life back into a government- led film industry that once thrived under the great directors of the Soviet era, such as Sergei Eisenstein and Andrei Tarkovsky, but now produces 57 films a year, most of which require state subsidies.
Films financed by Hollywood and beyond, including Oligarch, take the lion’s share of revenue from the impoverished cinema- going public, in turn starving the domestic industry. Shviydkoi wants Russia to be making a hundred films a year by 2006. One third of these will be directly financed by the state — the ministry of culture suggesting a theme to directors, and then funding their favourite proposal. President Putin, has bemoaned the fact that only 2 per cent of films shown in the country’s flourishing cinemas are home-grown.
Many see the state’s interest in cinema as part of an attempt to re-educate Russians. Putin has proposed the creation of a minister for youth to take charge of the education, economic and political well-being of generations raised under the chaos of the Yeltsin era.
“Under Yeltsin cinema was financed very poorly,” said Alexander Litvinov, the deputy director of Mosfilm, Russia’s biggest studios. “With Putin the situation is improving considerably, and the state gives about 50 per cent of the money necessary for the films. Naturally the state has a right to determine the priorities. He added: “The hero of the 90s cinema became the killer of a violent action movie in which everybody dies. The new hero is an intelligent, pragmatic and positive person — a person who wants to improve life in our country.”
Yet some fear this state-funded renaissance in Russian identity and pride may be too political. Nikolai Lebedev, a rising star among a new generation of Russian directors, said: “Money must be given not to finance some new mythical state idea. Today the state idea must be absolutely human — stories about personalities.”—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.