Russian movies - what they are like?

In The Soviet Union cinematography was a huge industry. May be it was no that big as Hollywood, but there were no bad films. Yes, strictly zero. Every movie was a masterpiece, with great scenario and perfect actors' play. Moreover movies were not only entertaining, they were thoghtful.
But with the fail of Soviet Union this beauty was all dead and gone. The number of movies produced have decreased to no more than 10 per year. And the quality of that movies was very low.
But several years ago the resurrection of russian cinematography has begun. It was a slow and painful process but finally it did well.

The first great Russian movie I saw was "The Night Watch". It is based on the fantasy trilogy about the opposition between dark and light "others". "Others" are a wide variety of creatures - wizards, vampires, witches and so on. They live lives of common russian people but also they have their secret life full of adventures. The
movie featured visual effects that were never seen in russian movies before. We were visiting theaters again and again just to see how good russian movie can be. "The Night Watch" quickly became best-seller movie holding russian box office record.



The second movie was a screen version of another popular book - Boris Akunin's "The Turkish Gambit". It covers the period of the war between Russia and Turkey. The movie has a great intriguing scenario, written by the book's author, and hollywood-style visual effects. And again it have had a fenomenal cash record, overcoming "The Night Watch".

The third one is the second part of "The Watch" trilogy, calling "The Day Watch" combining the second and the third books of the corresponding trilogy. This movie was actual breakthrough. Again. It was like "The Matrix" for hollywood, it has set up a new level for visual effects, operator and director's work for russian movies. Actually it looked even better than the majority of hollywood products. And again it was ideologically very close to the hearts of russian people. And best-seller again.



Since then russian movies are constantly getting more cash in theaters than american movies. Russian viewers do want good russian movies and they are finally ready to pay for them.

Borat is banned in Russia

Russian's Federal Culture and Cinematography Agency ("Goskino") has banned Borat from russian movie theatres. According to officials, "this movie contains materials that some people may find humiliating or abusive". Only porn films were banned from theatres before.

This is what I expected for. Before you start to blame Russia for our anti-democratic behavior take a notion of just one thing. Russia is multicultural country. The mix of religions, nations and cultures is so complicated you can hardly imagine. And of course it's very hard to keep all this messy stuff from falling into chaos. Relationships between defferent religous groups are not peaceful, and that's a fact. Sometimes a very little thing can cause a big fight with bad consequences. Having all that in mind, there's only one wise decision - stop the potential threat as soon as it is possible.

Just think about it. Common Russian school. Russian, Ukrainian, Georgian and of course Kazakh students. And then the popular movie appears that says "Kazakh drink piss". Kazakh children quickly become social outcasts offended at every corner. What's next? Kazakh children fight back. Other children fight them too and the next day it's their parents' turn to fight. What do you think it is? Yes, massive conflict between ethnical groups.

Kazakh are presented here just for example. I think that Kazakh people are the most peaceful ethnical group in Russia (at least, they have the lowest criminal activity). But everyone's patience has it's limits.

Well, may be Borat is funny (actually I don't think so), but the fact is that his popularity (say money) comes from a bloody source. Borat is the next generation of terrorists.