Позитивные изменения. Том 3, № 2 (2023). Positive changes. Volume 3, Issue 2 (2023)

An extra 5.5 billion rubles a year have been earmarked in the 2023–2025 state budget for the development of filmmaking in Russia, bringing the annual support volumes to about 12 billion rubles[14]. The authorities are expanding their support system for regional filmmakers, in the form of a tax rebate program that allows partial reimbursement of filming costs for films and series from the regional budget. For example, the St. Petersburg government has allocated 200 million rubles in subsidies to production of films in the city territory in 2023[15]. According to the Russian Cinema Fund, as of the end of 2022 domestic films have for the first time in history accounted for more than half of box office revenue[16]. Admittedly, the global situation in 2020–2022 has been anything but trivial, and the departure of big Hollywood distribution businesses from Russia in 2023 sent box office figures plummeting. Nevertheless, the Russian state is trying hard to reverse the situation, at least bringing it back to the pre-pandemic level.

The increase in state funding for domestic film production and the gradual increase in box office receipts for Russian films are certainly impressive.

But being interested in making profit only is invariably associated with artificial preservation of demand and often a drop in quality for the sake of entertaining the public. From this point of view, a film is a commodity, which prevents us from considering its sociocultural significance. British film sociologist Anthony Tudor asked a rhetorical question back in the 1970s: can you really expect viewers to be discriminate if they have never received a better product than what they are being offered? (Zhabsky Tarasov, 2012)

“THE GLOBAL CINEMA”

Film distributors rarely venture beyond attendance statistics and box office receipts in their study of audience – which means the viewers’ needs are basically ignored. The outcome is either a blatant blockbuster product without any social value whatsoever, or a boring movie that is a complete financial loss for the distributors.

It is gratifying that more and more people, including those who set the trends in the film market, are now beginning to understand that cinema is actually the most convenient channel for working with society. Namely, promoting new meanings, articulating problems and their solutions, interpreting the reality, defining behavior patterns. The film is the most comprehensive way to move the viewers, engage them emotionally through empathy or associating oneself with the characters. This has a tremendous impact on shaping or changing each individual’s behaviors and value systems.

Cinematography is a conductor of a certain ideology (in the broadest sense of the word, as per Sergei Eisenstein’s view); that is, a system of worldviews, a convoluted combination of experience, knowledge, customs, traditions, morals, norms, ideals, morality, corresponding to a particular society. Cinematography is largely responsible for the value orientations ensuring the preservation of society, its structure and forms of life (Mikhailova, 2018). This industry has long been a factor in the transformation of society and the socialization of its members. Modern society, as aptly noted in one study of the social role of cinema in this very society, is a “global cinema” (Kurtov, 2011).

Many recognize the cinema’s social role, but the success of films is still measured in the traditional way, by the budget vs. box office receipts. Few think of how the situation can be monitored further. What lessons does the average viewer take home? Did they have to think hard over what they had seen? Did it affect their life – at least in the short run? What about the lives and behaviors of those who were watching the film next to them?

The questions are many, the answers are few.

SPECIFICS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF ASSESSMENT OF INVESTMENT EFFECTIVENESS IN THE RUSSIAN FILM INDUSTRY

It is becoming less and less appropriate to limit the evaluation of the effectiveness of contemporary domestic cinematography to economic and investment terms alone, or to argue that supporting filmmaking is a basic and traditional responsibility of the state. The expert community is increasingly talking about the overdue need to introduce a system of substantive, qualitative assessments of films shot in the country, to study the social effects, the strength of the potential and actual social impact – which is often more revealing than the amount of box office receipts or the number of viewers who saw the picture. Moreover, the talk today is not so much about the immediate social effects (for example, significant changes in the life of a particular target audience), but about the impact in general – that is, the global social impact on the society in terms of changes in the public perceptions, attitudes, and behavior.