Humour on the Screen: the Transformation of the Russian Comedy in the XXI Century

The present work aims to investigate the evolution of Russian comedy films in the 21-century. It focuses on the understanding of the comedy genre in literature and theatre, provides a survey of its meaning in different times and finally defines it in cinematography. The main feature of the research is that it advances the comprehension of the term «comedy» within the stated time frames and traces its transformation from ancient times till present days in cinematography, theatre and literature. The study embraces different approaches to the definition of the term «comedy» and analyzes seminal works dedicated to the history of comedy films. The anticipated result of the work is the definition of the concept of «humor» in contemporary Russian comedy films and providing a comparison with the past approaches, which is expected to benefit information users.