International Film Festivals in modern Russia: features of selection, conduct and promotion

The film festival movement in Russia is one of the oldest and was born at the same time as the world's leading screenings. Throughout its existence, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, it was inextricably linked to restrictions that prevented its even development and the reputation of a significant cultural event that had developed around it in the 1960s. The significance of Russian international film festivals for both the world and national film culture is still uncertain. The main Russian review — MIFF, is annually criticized by the professional community. Other emerging international film festivals have not yet formed as major screenings that would attract several hundred thousand people each year. While the world's "A" class film festivals have been rebuilding the viewing system for decades, focusing most of their attention on film markets and distribution, Russian screenings have remained and remain committed to the archaic system of viewing and showing films as an event. This work is devoted to the study the main goals and objectives set by major international film festivals in modern Russia. The research question of this paper is as follows: how do modern international film festivals in Russia, formed their policies and the selection of the competition program. The purpose of the research is to reconstruct the policy and specifics of selecting films for the competitive programs of international film festivals in Russia. A matrix was created to evaluate the film programs, which includes a number of parameters: the main topics raised in the films of the competition programs; geographical features of participating films; the presence of debut films; the presence of paintings by iconic Directors and the gender aspect. This approach is the key, but the only one in this work. Thus, the first Chapter presents the main milestones of the international festival movement and the principles of functioning of four Russian international film festivals: "MIFF", "Message to man", "Artdokfest", "Pacific Meridians". They were also given for the analysis of film programs in the second part of the study, where the main functions of long-term festival information partners were also considered. The text part of the work, excluding links, is presented on 111 pages. In addition to this study, the Appendix contains tables and materials that formed the basis for the work on the second Chapter. Key Words: Film Festivals, Culture, Film, Russia