The essay looks into some aspects of the pedagogical activities of the filmmaker Mikhail Romm at VGIK between 1938 and 1971 in the context of their possible application in contemporary film education. For more than one hundred years of its history, VGIK has been aiming at creative integration of the latest achievements in cinema and its own world-renowned traditions; that is why Romm’s contribution to film education is still valuable nowadays.
On the basis of Mikhail Romm’s lectures at VGIK and other sources, the essay emphasizes how skillfully he carried out the introduction of cinema within the history of arts as a whole and how accurately he integrated film theory and practice in constant interaction with the students.
The author of the essay stresses the fact that Mikhail Romm always aspired to make his presentations before student audiences as fascinating and as graphic as possible. Judging by the reactions of his students and the VGIK audience, he was fully successful. There is little doubt that many teachers set themselves similar goals. However, it is Romm who — following Sergei Eisenstein — became a model professor of encyclopedic learning, freely, consistently and productively sharing his immense knowledge with students.
As a teacher Romm was always interested not only in the past of cinema but also in its present and future. He advocated the need to always follow all changes in the cinematic process so that future filmmakers – primarily film directors — could fully master their craft.
The essay implies the need for a further study of Mikhail Romm’s pedagogical heritage which will make a significant contribution to contemporary film education and lead to new discoveries.

The article is devoted to the updated methods of writing on film history. The author’s conception is based on his personal experience of writing the text-book “The Recent History of Russian Cinema” as well as on the debate in the “Film Art” (Iskusstvo kino) magazine in the early 1970s, which revealed a number of issues that are still relevant nowadays: methods of cinema studies, the principles of writing both scholarly papers and teaching aids for students, certain expectations from a historic research, the approach to the subject matter, etc.
The author reflects on the advantages and disadvantages of two approaches: individual, subjective, striving for the polemical sharpness of the personal historical assessments, on the one hand, and collective, claiming certain impartialness, on the other.
All these reflections led him to a model that he still sees as a multiauthored monograph, as long as it takes on the task of a detailed fundamental presentation of extensive material that requires profound knowledge in various areas. However, he does not think it appropriate to ignore the subjective component. An individual viewpoint makes it possible to create a specific semantic high field that initiates various theoretical views on filmmaking.
Therefore, the functions of the team of authors can be distributed as follows: each contributor writes a fragment of the description of the historical process, perhaps even in its synchronous understanding, and together they create something that cannot be done by one researcher: an initial empirical picture. After that, one researcher, the supervisor, combines the isolated fragments into a coherent whole, something that is completely beyond the power of a team of authors. This supervisor eventually writes an integral history in his own way (but in a dialogue with the other experts) thus supplementing the original empirical picture with a single essentially diachronic view.

The emergence of fiction film came into being as a reaction to the people’s objective need for the vivid spectacle and the need to fill people’s expanding free time due to the effect of industrialization, urbanization and the growth of cities. Great capacity in this regard lurked in professional artistic creativity.
At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, of parallel existence were two worlds of the artistic culture: professional art for the privileged classes and folk art created and consumed by the populace. Professional art capable of systemically filling the free time of the broad popular masses did not exist. In a large measure fiction film eliminated the deficiency.
The commercial practice of film made a certain contribution to the convergence of film art with folk art. The products of professional artistic creativity were widely accepted by the masses. But they above all are the means for the business to commercially express itself. Here there is no provision of a true self-expression of the populace in the process of consuming them.
The self-expression of the populace is also limited through the excessive aestheticism of the artistic creativity. On the territory of the massed — in its essence — film there emerged a field of limited production: the elite art. Its esthetic practices contend for the status of the main line in the development of film art and the communication related to it.
Film came to a halt halfway in realizing its historical purpose: the convergence of the professional artistic creativity with folk art as regards the potential for the populace’s self-expression. Unsolved remains the issue of institutionalizing popular film as the «golden middle» between the polar means of cinematic communication. The root of the cause is, above all, in the absence of necessary contextual conditions, social and epistemological.

When considering pre-revolutionary newsreels, a certain standardization of the filming becomes evident.
As soon as the February Revolution of 1917 began to unfold, cameramen, led by M. Bonch-Tomaszewski and V. Viskovskiy, took to the streets of the capital to capture the previously unimaginable revolutionary events. The developments brought about a change in the vision of events, which effectively shattered previous understanding of the life around us. The new vision led to innovative filming techniques and new meanings of the footage. That said, the authors of the footage did not try to add any extra implication or significance; on the contrary, in their work they were guided by the meanings and senses that emerged in the course of revolutionary events.
Many stories were subsequently used in a variety of documentaries; two examples are considered in the present article — “The Anniversary of the Revolution” by D. Vertov and “From Tzar to Lenin” by H. Axelbank. H. Axelbank started collecting documentary footage in 1920, so that in his film he could use material which D. Vertov did not have access to and which was not to be found in the Krasnogorsk archive.
Film footage depicting the February revolution is imbued with the spirit of unbridled freedom and conveys the most radical demands that took hold of the masses. Street manifestations literally manifest these senses and meanings. Later on, annual holidays became filled with street demonstrations that did not so much manifest, as rather demonstrated support, often formal, of the existing political regime in the country.

Notwithstanding the variety of genres, the relevance of historical cinema lies in presenting the political conflicts of the described historical periods responding to the social demand inherent in the time of their release. Moreover, according to Pierre Sorlin, a renowned historian and film scholar, the main thing about historical cinema is not historic authenticity, but the logic of history, which offers ample opportunities for artistic freedom.
These factors determine the choice of the article’s subject matter, namely, the case study of three Russian historic films: “1612” (2007, dir. Vladimir Khotinenko), “Boris Godunov” (2011, dir. Vladimir Mirzoyev) and “The Heart of Parma” (2022, dir. Anton Megerditchev), since firstly their events and characters are identified by the audience as part of national history, and secondly the contemporary representation of the past evokes associations with the actual here and now. “1612” describes the political turmoil of the “Time of Trouble” in Russia, evoking associations with the collapse of the USSR, the political and economic disruption of the state machine as well as the sense of losing national identity. Recounting the events at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries “Boris Godunov” fits into the early 2010s, emphasizing its relevance through the cultural associations in the characterization of powerful elites and the essence of power. “The Heart of Parma”, set in the reign of Ivan III, narrates about the conquest of the Perm Principality by Moscow in the fifteenth century, corresponds to the current debate about Russia's imperial past, geopolitics, the relationship between an empire and its colonies, and ultimately the vector of the state's development.
Reflecting the public and/or ideological demand at the time of their release, these films can be looked upon as spotlighting the vicissitude of the formation of national self-consciousness (identity); a probabilistic model of the relationship between usurped power and the loss of political will jeopardizing the integrity of the country; and the civilizing cultural mission of imperialism in Russian statehood. Thus, the films themselves fit into the logic of history, forming in the audience a sense of involvement in the historical and cultural heritage of the country.

The article looks into the concept of silence in the context of modern sound design. The aesthetic aspect of film sound and cinematic space, including the notion of silence implies an insight into the historical phases of the phenomenon’s development, the artistic and technological contexts of the film’s production. As a research object, silence falls into a number of components (‘quiet spots’) – soundlessness, quietness, pause – which suggests different approaches to their comprehension, accordingly, to their practical implementation in the film’s sound track. ‘Silent spots’ entail essentially different phenomena sharing complete or almost complete – up to the point of indistinguishability by hearing – absence of sound (foleys, dialogue, or music). Absolute silence, a kind of ‘sound vacuum’, is quite a rare and powerful expressive means, motivated either by the dramatic structure and particularities of the intraframe locations, or by the filmmaker’s aesthetic principles. A ‘quiet spot’ in the film will be perceived as such relative to the previous and subsequent scenes, i.e. the formation of silence requires a certain degree of its dynamic difference from more sonically saturated or openly loud scenes. Silence does not only have acoustic, but also semantic and aesthetic parameters, in a certain temporal modality (from linearrealistic to vertical-existential time). The analysis of the artistic implementation of silence in auteur sound filmmaking shows that silence is not only an acoustic phenomenon, but also an existential one, associated with the specific power of the viewer’s aesthetic experience of a multi-level semantic space revealed to them via the specific aspects of the acoustic space. Therefore, by creating silence the sound designer must envision their actions from both the practical and aesthetic side, taking into account a variety of pragmatic and artistic issues. In this regard, sound design lies within the constantly evolving process of interaction between technical innovations, various artistic practices and academic art studies.

The article examines the holistic approach to structuring an artistic composition. It shows the general patterns inherent in imaginative thinking. An artistic image is in most cases an integral formation with multiple dynamic interrelationships. These elements are typically analyzed in isolation, which leads to a distortion of the basic artistic meaning.
However, academic and artistic research lays special emphasis on our brain’s striving for a comprehensive perception of the entire structure of the object. To illustrate this point, the author quotes several major scholars who consider thinking and perception from the standpoint of integrity, arguing that our mind picks out integral figurative patterns. In this regard, the article refers to some provisions of G. Kelly’s theory, namely, that our thinking tends to present all known relationships between phenomena as a holistic plexus of interdependent entities. Similar ideas based on the nature of cognition were expressed by K.G. Jung, A.N. Losev and many others.
The article states the necessity to consider a phenomenon in relation to other phenomena bearing in mind that the methodology of our artistic analysis of phenomena based on the idea of a separate thing is essentially not accurate enough.
The author comes to the conclusion that artistic integrity is a set of nonidentical elements (possibly opposite) and relations between them, which, organized compactly, release additional energy of the super-meaning, i.e. a meaning exceeding the simple sum of individual meanings of a systemic artistic image

The article treats filming methods not as much as purely applied technologies but as the sources of filmmakers’ creative endeavors, the basis of inventing new cinematic images for meeting diverse artistic challenges, as well as the possibility of designing a new cinematic reality, rendering the director’s concepts including grotesque fancies and speculative pictures. They also make it possible to create new artistic and semantic contexts, enrich cinema’s visual language, and push the limits of production resources.
Although the influence of technology on film art rarely becomes the subject of academic research, technological progress broadens the inventory of shooting techniques and methods, thus making a huge impact on the evolution of filmmaking. The author makes an attempt to examine some shooting techniques as the source of artistic choices, as a powerful instrument of shaping the basics of filmmaking as both art and spectacle, rather than a mere engineering aid.
Such shooting techniques as high-speed, time-lapse, reverse-motion and frame-by-frame photography, the ability to assemble several successive images into one and combine photography with the projection of previously shot frames made it possible to create and present a completely new cinematic reality. These techniques have largely shaped the language of cinema, its artistic and semantic codes. Creative use of shooting methods and their transformation into artistic and cinematographic devices have led to the emergence of ingenious dramatic patterns, a wider range of narrative themes, the creation of new characters, including non-existent ones, made it possible to visualize the stream of consciousness and diverse speculative pictures. The ways of shooting expanded and enriched the genre diversity of cinema. Moreover, shooting techniques based on the very nature of film shooting and video recording became the main means of meeting a variety of visual challenges, thereby providing film-makers with enormous opportunities to solve the most complex creative, organizational and financial issues which makes cinema the most popular and spectacular medium.

The author focuses on the perception of music and musicmaking practices in Dziga Vertov's silent films Kino-eye (1924) and A Sixth Part of the World (1926). The art of music, virtuoso or simple and sometimes unsophisticated practices of playing various instruments — be it bugle, tambourine, accordion or piano, as well as their being in a state of quiescence —often determine the director's special poetic style. The analysis of shots does not so much demonstrate the avant-garde qualities of films, but reveals the constructs by means of which the director interacted with immediate reality, transforming it into a mythopoetic artistic canvas.
In A Sixth Part of the World (1926) Dionysian exhilaration with foxtrot rhythms is contrasted with the measured movement of machines. The constructivist geometry of huge mechanisms rhymes with an orderly, thorough, extremely serious interpretation of the emerging new world. Shots showing representatives of the elite class equal “post-impressionist” colors, so to speak, the depravity of the obsolete world order. This peculiarly literal denial of the “old” art and glorification of the “new” one suggest the outline of Dziga Vertov's film manifesto and his emerging unique poetics.
In Kino-Eye the director uses the musical metaphor in a visual-verbal way. Vertov contrasts the rural Dionysian musical practices (performance, listening, ecstatic dances) with the marching rhythms of bugles and drums of pioneers and maintains that the clear-cut structure of the march is a step towards the sublime.
In Vertov's films, music virtuoso playing or simple music-making directly within the space of the frame create that complicated poetic counterpoint, which was clearly perceived by the Soviet audience, who had difficulty in interpreting it. Through the metaphorical use of musical instruments and playing them Vertov introduces motifs that directly or by their reversal paint the image of a new man, a new world.

One of the most traumatic periods in Italian history was the “Years of Lead”, roughly from 1968 to 1980. This decade was marked by an unprecedented rise of politically motivated violence, unemployment and corruption scandals. These socio-cultural shifts were reflected not only in auteur films by prominent directors, but also in narrative pictures of various sub-genres, be that spaghettiwesterns, giallos, or poliziotteschi.
Poliziotteschi were crime films featuring street and organized crime, terrorism and corruption. Many researchers are still not sure whether it is a standalone genre or virtually any criminal film can qualify as a poliziottesco. There is no real consensus on this issue either among academics, or cinephiles, which sometimes makes it difficult to categorize a certain film.
Although academic researchers tend to look down upon these films, because they rarely meet the high aesthetic standards set by Italian renowned filmmakers, it’s the poliziotteschi, that, while remaining fundamentally entertaining, captured the traumatic experience of Italian society like no other films made in those years. They portrayed, allegorically or literally, the real key events of the time as well as those invented. One could argue that watching these films represented a cathartic ritual of exposure (conspiracies) or retribution (vengeance taken by Lone Avengers), whereas their creation was similar to the artistic evocation of the collective unconscious: traumas, fears, hopes and hidden desires.
Anyway, studying poliziotteschi helps find new ways of assessing academically marginalized films of the same kind made in other countries during traumatic and dramatic historical periods

The article justifies the emergence of the term “neuromedia” to designate the use of neural networks, artificial intelligence for the development of products in creative industries. So far the practice of applying these methods is limited to pioneers who choose to evaluate speedy approaches to the creative process, to master technological innovations. Mastering new ways of extending creative modeling — be it in film production, media industries or scientific research — can augment the creative and production potential of creative industries, form a separate neuromedia segment which will occupy its own niche in the media market.
The main problem is related to the transition of mankind to a new stage of social development — the information and digital age, which began to develop rapidly with the arrival of the millennium, — where a person interacts with knowledgeintensive technologies and develops in line with the algorithm “man-machine”.
However, the ongoing processes of large-scale training in Russia and worldwide in the use of artificial intelligence for producing creative products pose serious questions for society and creative industries (cinema, media industry). A media product should comply with the criteria of a creative idea, originality, novelty, and not be turned out according to templates, targeting solely the economic result. But mass machine learning assumes that media products are produced by people who do not have professional and scientific knowledge. As a result, there emerges an independent neuromedia segment on the media market, which is filled with products of low quality and questionable content.
The article quotes famous scientists (V.I. Vernadsky, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, E. Cassirer, M.K. Mamardashvili, V.M. Mezhuev, M.N. Epstein) who stressed the development of science and individual culture in society. And this is the task to be realized by the creative industries at the turning point in the life of society in order to develop the individual's need for reflexion and cognition of new phenomena. The article substantiates the advent of the next stage of social reforms — the information-quantum era, which will rely upon the collective consciousness of social actors.