Short Film: Genre Originality of Debuts

Abstract

The articles analyses contemporary Russian short-length films.
In the “Short Film and Cinematic Process”section, the shorts are compared to
full-length films, revealing such basic typological features of shorts as greater
freedom in choosing a subject, broad opportunities for experiments with the
specific genre characteristics and with the selection of the means of expression,
a shorter distance between the film and the viewer due to digital technologies
and the availability of online movie platforms. In the section “Russian Short
Films in the Context of World Trends”, the authors of the article compare
Russian short films of recent years and their foreign counterparts and come to
the conclusion that domestic films are chaster, their authors do not raise radical
feminist issues, do not aim to shock the viewer by provocative social dramas.
The section “Russian Short-length films: Quality Criteria”, substantiates the idea
about a specific contribution of the best term and graduation works of students
and recent graduates of the All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography
named after S. Gerasimov to the modern achievements of domestic shorts.
In the sections “Audience hits: the formula for success”, “Gender and family
problems in Russian short-length films”, “Crime comedy as a critical aspect of
the perception of reality” the authors undertake a case study of short films and
outline the following problematic areas addressed by modern Russian short film
directors: growing up and choosing a life path, gender problems, anthropology of
family and parenthood, interrogative rhetoric and new sentimentality, the search
for national identity, critical and ironic aspects of the perception of reality. The
article has a sufficient degree of relevance and scientific novelty, since modern
Russian short films have not been the subject of special research until now.