The article analyzes newsreel footage filmed by Russian cameramen during the First World War and now deposited in the Russian State Archives of Film and Photo Documents. As a rule, previously all such footage was approached from a historical point of view. At the same time, the emphasis was put on films created by the Skobelev Committee. What seems more relevant nowadays, is the analysis of the footage from the perspective of cinematographic technique and stylistic peculiarities.
This analysis is what determines the novelty of the work. It allows one to compare how battle was filmed in the early days of the war with the dynamism and drama filling the shots by the end of 1916. At the same time, new shooting techniques were mastered. The paper also takes into consideration the content of the film footage. Previously unexplored details and particularities are considered, such as the religious ritual performed during the war in all troops and divisions of the Russian army.
The methodological approach of the study consists in a detailed examination of film documents which are currently stored in the archives - often without a detailed identification of facts, events and circumstances. This makes it possible to reveal the internal logic of the film footage, to attribute unidentified fragments and episodes. The article looks at the ways of organizing filming at the front-line and at those who took part in it, describes the previously unknown fact of the very first shooting made on the South-Western Front in September 1914, and the scandal that followed.
Documents dating back to 1916, found in the State Archives of the Russian Federation, made it possible to determine with absolute accuracy the original montage construction of the film “The Capture of Trebizond” and to identify a number of new fragments in the Archives of Film and Photo Documents related to this film and considered lost. A number of film documents relating to the final stage of the Brusilov Offensive in 1916, known as the Bukovinian breakthrough, have been revealed.
The article comes to a logical conclusion that the skills acquired by the filmmakers provided the effective basis for the innovative practices of the emerging Soviet documentary.

The development of information and communication technologies has actualized the task of galvanizing the synergy of educational and media-cultural systems in the process of reproducing the human capital. Media education creates the communicative competence of student youth as an element of the accumulated human capital and an important parcel for its development. In light of these realities an sociocommunicative aspect is applied to the problematics of pedagogical practice within the syllabus of «One-hundred most valuable films for school students» recommended by the Russian Ministry of Culture. The end result of fulfilling the syllabus depends on the teachers’ skills in using film art as a pedagogical tool and on academically training some communicatively qualified intermediaries between cinema and school students. The teacher’s intermediary role implies, among other things, the ability of overcoming a certain dissonance in the interrelation between the functional potential of the films, forming the collection of the most valuable works (primarily of Soviet origin), and the post-Soviet students’ functional orientations toward cinema. A complete commitment to the entertainment value was not characteristic for either Soviet films or the school-age audience. In the post-Soviet period the entertainment component of both the cinema repertoire and the demands of the student youth came to the fore. Hence, the effectiveness of film education depends on the pedagogue’s finding the points of reciprocal functional attraction between the collection of the «best» films and student youth. Successful implementation of this task is the key to uniting the pedagogically expedient with the perceptively pleasurable. In this regard, for educators' consideration there are offered some pertinent sociological materials.

The article tackles the image of Moscow in Soviet cinema. The author examines the image of the city through the concepts of old and new. In his opinion, the Moscow “urban text” is akin to a palimpsest, where a new “architectural message” overwrites the earlier “scraped off” ones.
Starting from the late 1920s, Moscow gradually evolved from a patriarchal into an industrial city. The features of old Moscow are forcibly erased and the eradicated portions yield their place to symbols of a new life. This way a new architectural text overwrites the previous one, which has been partially erased. A huge number of people strive to get to Moscow – after all, it is here that the most secret desires can come true, that real life is in full swing. On the screens of the 30s and early 50s Moscow is a Utopia, a dream-like best city on earth. Some people are still searching for a new even better life, while others are demonstrating their labor achievements.
Prominent countrymen, best workers, having accomplished their labor feat, hurry to connect with the sacred and display their achievements at the VDNKh exhibition or to stride across Red Square (or, as a mark of the highest social status, to visit the Kremlin halls, or the Party Congress sessions). This motive is further reinforced by the obligatory link between the center and the periphery. Cinema elaborates its own system of representing the image of the capital, which is built primarily on two components: the sacred, ceremonial image of the city is positioned vertically, and the human, lyrical one is horizontal.
In the Moscow mythology of the Belle Epoque period the image of transport is invariably positive. On-screen Moscow transport often plays a role that goes far beyond the scope of their professional duties. Transport symbolizes freedom and unity, the invigorating blood flow of the capital, which has its own poetry and mythology.
The romantic image of Moscow will almost completely disappear at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, when filmmakers will begin to actively reevaluate their approach to society in general and the image of Moscow in particular.

The article discusses issues related to the significance of the audience's reaction to modern film premieres, appealing to all ranks of viewers, which is largely due to the fact that, given the massive scale of the cinema art and provided that the subject matter is in tune with major concerns of general public, releases of certain films have a fairly wide resonance.
Skillful use of ways and means of cinematic expression makes it possible to involve the viewer in the on-screen developments, creating an illusion of a co-creative act. Invisible links between the filmmakers and the audience arise as a result of building an on-screen construct capable of instilling meanings and ideas into the minds of the viewers which the latter subconsciously perceive as their own, unquestionably positive and immune to critical analysis. Consequently the filmmakers opt for creating the protagonists as simple and comprehensible as possible. Thus it is appropriate to highlight a certain tendency which appeared in Russian cinema in the mid-2010s and is likely to persist for the current decade at the least.
The tendency presupposes numerous attempts to bring back to life numerous conventions of the Soviet epoch, time of the victories of the Soviet Union on the political and socio-cultural international arena.

Rapid and worldwide extension of streaming video distribution raises relevant questions concerning the state of cinema as art and social institution. The author concentrates on the problems connected to the spectator’s preference for platform service at the expense of theatrical one, mostly related to the perception of cinema as a work of art, and tries to determine if a certain essential component of the reception is lost as a result of autonomous viewing.
Cinema historians saw the advantages of theatrical viewing in the coupling of the technological potential of cinema with the situation of a public venue — spectators’ integration into a group, identifying themselves with a film as discourse and simultaneously with the elements of narration, connecting the illusory screen space and the real space of the cinema hall.
In other words, in creating an inter-subjective base for getting new experience and its subsequent mutual exchange. However, under contemporary technological conditions a new process of mass interactive communication (self-communication according to Manuel Castells), connected with the culture and technology of network society, comes into play.
Independent selection of films for individual viewing and public response to them in social networks exemplify this sort of communication, which is analyzed by the author taking as an example a certain discussion on the Russian streaming platform “Kinopoisk”. Turning to some milestones of cinema history in connection with the collective and individual viewing, the author comes to the conclusion that platform distribution is logically integrated into the cinematic process.
Accordingly in the contemporary context of network culture stand-alone viewing as a variant of self-communication doesn’t restrain, but stimulates the spectator’s agency, his urge to search for and generate meaning in the streamed content as well as prolongs the product’s life and advances its updating.

The Cartoon “Shrek” (2001, directed by E. Adamson and V. Jenson) became the pioneer fairy tale of the XXI century, which defined new canons of the folklore genre in cinema.
Deconstructing the structure of the fairy tale, irony about classical patterns, characters, tropes and plots, quotes from media culture, as well as the changing aesthetics of life have given the fairy tale a new edge in the context of the postmodern era. The success of the new fairy tale patterns has had a significant impact on world cinema. It is especially interesting to trace the influence of “Shrek” in modern Russian screen fairy tales, which still use the formal techniques of the American animation.
The article studies the ways of updating classic fairy tale patterns used in “Shrek”, and their adaptation in modern-day national screen fairy tales.
The first parts of two of the most famous Russian animation franchises were selected as the research material: “Alyosha Popovich and Tugarin the Snake” (2004, dir. K. Bronzit) - the first cartoon that used the techniques of “Shrek”, and “The Tsarevich Ivan and the Gray Wolf ” (2011, directed by V. Toropchin) — a project released a decade after the American cartoon, but also employing its formula. In addition to proving its influence on mainstream animation, the article examines the borrowing and translation of these techniques from animation into live-action fairy tales, which have also picked up the trend of the necessary changes in fairy-tale patterns.
The changing world of animated and live-action fairy tales, which has been filled with quotations from different spheres of culture and history, which is using irony as the main method of ridicule and the creation of new folklore patterns, reflects the general process of forming a media space, where fairy tales must also abide by the altered rules.
The main purpose of the article is to prove the influence of “Shrek” on the basic transformation and construction of modern national fairy tales, not only in their animated variety, but also in the form of live-action projects such as “The Book of Masters” and the franchise “The Last Warrior”, which became important milestones in the setting-up of a modern Russian fairy–tale universe.

The digital environment embedded in the media universe has become a part of an individual’s private space, where a special place belongs to the screen art and, in particular, to the music subculture, i.e. video clips. The study of the peculiarities of their perception in the Internet space constitutes the purpose of the article. The paper identifies the main characteristics of music videos, for which the media have become a regular place for receiving information, immersing into musical space and a platform for communication.
The relevance of the research is due to the growing interest in the placement of songs, broadcasting concerts and music videos over the Internet and the immense influence of verbal and nonverbal communication on the modern man. The article also raises questions related to the degree of the recipient’s immersion in the chosen environment. Their study shows that in the networks one can not only derive information and aesthetic pleasure from the music, but also make themselves known as individuals, interacting with a virtual audience, sharing their video content and commentaries. Hence, significant attention is given to identifying the characteristics of clips which are structurally based on theatrical, cinematic, animation conventions and can have mixed forms (staged shots, staged shots + concert performance etc.) still always being basically short, mosaic and fragmentary.
Considering structural peculiarities of contemporary multi-genre music videos, their modality and metaphoric nature, the author comes to the conclusion that visual appeal and a certain dialogueness in video clips do not only shape the recipients’ worldview, but also encourage independent creativity, the search for like-minded people (fan-clubs) and the emergence of their inner world.

The article explores an array of philosophical connotations, metaphors and mythologems found in the promo content (trailers) of the Assassin’s Creed game franchise as a specific form of visualized text and a mode of narration realizing the concept of mythmaking in audio-visualized media space in the era of information revolution.
Turning the spotlight on defining the role of ad material, the author focuses on the fact that the game franchise’s trailer and teaser as a specific cinematic tool (as demonstrated in the article) have an extensive imagery bearing the “philosophy” of the project, which gives the game action meaning and point.
While retaining its promotional function, a cinematic trailer is not only an independent production, but also a carrier of various and numerous archetypal constructions that form mass consciousness (which now, rejecting the classical rationalistic principles, once again tends towards mythmaking). This, in turn, gives rise to “the new mythology” actively drawing on “classical plots and imagery”, thus suggesting continuity in the spiritual evolution of human civilization.
Being a distillation of the basic features of a certain area of the mass culture information space, the trailer can be interpreted as a techno-artistic hybrid phenomenon, indicative of the transformation of media industry in terms of the historical discourse. Thus it proves the modification of a complex of stereotypical mental constructions of the social organization, which in the globalized world grows into an international category.
The author argues that this phenomenon manifests itself in a surge of mythmaking within the modern multicultural tradition, which in turn leads to the formation of a new cultural paradigm based on the concept of providentialism, which in its turn acts as a tool for analyzing the historical and cultural process, based on the instrumentalization of the previous experience, mutating in the global discourse

The article examines number of Danish films about ‘white female slaves’ which did not only become a noticeable event in European filmmaking and gained popularity in Russia, but also marked the concern for the ‘women’s issue’ in world cinema.
Although small by modern standards, Danish cinema of the early 1910s had a significant impact on the world cinema. Far from being the European leader in the number of releases, it, nevertheless, managed to set the tone in the ‘cup-and saucer’ drama, start a fashion for ‘Danish melodrama’ and provocative movies, introduce the viewer to the ‘Danish kiss’ and generate a new ‘vamp’ heroines which would soon transform into the image of a new woman and mark the most important changes in the socio-cultural and socio-political life of society. Later all the Danish innovations would be picked up and developed by German, Soviet and American film industries.
Danish films exploited the controversial and taboo subject of human vice, sexuality and inter-gender relationships, often responding to current and sensational agendas. What the Russian pre-revolutionary press called “glamorizing the 20th century moral degradation” can in fact be also attributed to the film industry’s adaptation of scandal to its needs, i.e. the creation of an action-packed story. Thus, Danish film industry enters the international film market with the hot topic of “white slavery”.
The paper analyzes the films about “women's slavery” made in 1907–1912 and traces how the cultural and historical context of the time transformed the acute social theme of sexual slavery into an ideological construct of ‘new woman’ representing the ‘spirit of the time’ (German: Zeitgeist).

The article explores the application of fine art’s expressive possibilities to filmmaking as exemplified in films made by Peter Greenaway, an English director, artist and one of the main figures in modern auteur cinema. His films are characterized by a highly intellectual and philosophic perspective due to the particularly rich visual component as well as the tendency for a dialogue with other art forms.
New cultural forms and practices often originate from the synthesis of various arts, and in this sense, fine art and cinema demonstrate a particularly close blend based on space-time dimensions. Despite a sufficient body of research on this synthesis in general, the interaction and mutual influence of the languages of the two art forms is touched upon relatively seldom. Nevertheless, the systematization of the visual and expressive means remains poorly studied due to the lack of a thorough analysis of each of them in the context of the «fine art — cinema» relationship.
The expressive means borrowed from visual arts (from painting in particular) promote development of the film language and enhance the impact of audiovisual works. The identification of these techniques is necessary for understanding the common principles of forming up a visual image. This article highlights the use of fine art’s expressive means in filmmaking. Drawing on the example of Peter Greenaway’s work, the author lays special emphasis on the «fine art — cinema» pair, taking into account the synthetic character of the latter.

Rapid technological progress at the beginning of the third decade of the 21th century entails new approaches to structuring the segments of cultural industries and their produce. The article substantiates the introduction of such concepts as “artistic industries”, “cultural industries”, and “creative industries” in Russia and their merging into a cluster system with subsequent transformation into a meta- and ecosystem of creative production of ideas, goods and services. The article reveals the influence of IT-technologies on the cultural and creative sector of digital economy and the impact of creative industries on the sociocultural paradigm of the society entering a new digital reality.
The author justifies the immersion of our contemporary in a symbiotic human-machine relationship which means the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and VR technologies (VR). Their increasing appropriation is changing the landscape of the Internet space as a prototype of a new networked information-digital structure. Some scholars rate these processes as a “Great Anthropological Transition”, since our contemporary is connected with four Umvelts: the Techno-world of machines, gadgets and robots; the Neuro-world of virtual reality; the Myth-world of culture and history; the Net-world of networks and collective unconscious (crowd-sourcing and crowd-funding). Synergy researchers propose to minimize the problem of mastering intellectual technologies, i. e. to elaborate an array of “value-oriented tools in the socio-techno-sphere as a complex open system”, to draw up roadmaps for social development. A symbolic role is also assigned to creative industries, which are now structurally forming in Russia as a humanitarian segment of digital economy in the form of clusters and meta-systems in megacities and regions.