The article analyses two closely interrelated research topics: the nature of pre-revolutionary film censorship and the question of the beginnings of cinema in Russia. Early film censorship cannot be studied without considering the arrival of cinema, and, vice versa, since the birth of cinema in the Russian Empire is related to the first cases of censorship. The author argues that the widely accepted date of 1907/8 as the starting point needs to be revised. Even before large-scale commercial production and distribution of feature films such as Sten’ka Razin, in different parts of the Russian Empire ample evidence of growing enthusiasm for the recording of movement can be found. Engineers, inventors, photographers, and showmen became fledgling filmmakers. The author bases her argumentation on the birth of cinema in Russia mainly on examples dating back to the 19th century. During the festivities of Nicholas’ II coronation in May 1896 the French cinema apparatus clashed with the Imperial Police in Moscow. After Russian screenings of Lumières films containing a selection of moving images of the Emperor, the Russian court took matters in their hands and started producing their own Royal films - both private ‘home movies’ and those chosen for public screenings. This is the moment when a relatively stable, yet not public form of film production was established inside Russia continuing for two decades: the Tsar and his family being filmed by the court photographers Matuszewski, and later Jagielski. Some of these court film chronicles were also shown in cinema-theatres. The article also treats the reasons for the later suppression of these early Royal film production in Soviet historiography. While establishing a tight bond between Lenin and the film medium, Soviet film historians had to bury the pivotal role the Imperial court played in cinema’s beginning in Russia. After having been the first object of foreign actualities in Russia, Nicholas II became not only a patron of Imperial film productions; moreover, the interference of Court censorship, overseen by the Ministry of the Interior, made clear that films shown and produced in Russia would have to deal with several censorship institutions protecting the representation of the sacred and regulating the free flow of information. The earliest example is the police confiscating a camera with film material shot by Lumières film reporters in Khodynka in May 1896. At this very early stage a procedure is set for the rise to a development of practices of film censorship.

The presented text is a publication of archival materials from the Eisenstein’s Fund in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI). The author of the publication reconstructed and commented some episodes from creative and personal biography of S.M. Eisenstein in the beginning of the 1930's. In particular, some fragments from private correspondence of Eisenstein and Esther Shub сut when published in the 1970s have been restored; the reasons for the reaction of the director to the of Shub’s suggestion to make a film based on the novel ‘‘Manhattan’’ by John Dos Passos have been elucidated. The details and features of the artistic life of Russia in the 1930s are reflected in the epistolary genre of Eisenstein's work. The text presented also dwells on some cases of ‘‘selective approach’’ towards publishing books in the Soviet era. The author, using comparative historical and textual analysis, restores the true picture of Eisenstein's relationship to the work of a number of representatives of Russian and foreign cinema and literature, and also explains the reasons for some important events in the creative life of the director.

The song is the most democratic and popular musical genre widely used in cinema art, beginning with the silent period. Due to its rhythmic-melodic and compositional characteristics, the song provides great opportunities for its various usage as a structural element of a film and in the creation of the unique sound-visual imagery. In Russian cinema the song reflected not only the artistic but also socio-historical features of its time, some of which have only recently been clarified, with the discovery and publication of previously inaccessible archival sources. A lot of documentary and archival materials, often labeled "top secret" which have been available only by the end of 1980s, reveals the dramatic and sometimes tragic confrontation between the ideologists of Socialist Realism and the supporters of the so-called Formalism, and those simply evading the "general line of the Party". The discovery of the inner world of an individual (as distinguished from the collectivist), shown in chamber wartime pictures, finds its continuation in the cinema of the late 1950s-1960s. Of particular importance are the text and even the single word of the song, and also the personality of the performer, expressed in a unique manner of singing, in a special intonation and timbre, which do not always presuppose presence of a professional strong voice. The song is an indicator of many processes taking place in Russian society, which is also relevant for the newest Russian cinema. The song in the modern film becomes, on the one hand, a sign of the hero's belonging to a certain subculture, and on the other hand - the expression of one’s otherness and inner loneliness. The article defines the important trends in the development of the song genre in Soviet-Russian cinema for several decades, which makes it possible to create a basis for analyzing new audiovisual phenomena in the newest Russian cinema.

The article is devoted to analysis of Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea (1916) through the category of so-called “cinema of grief” dealing with the problems of enduring trauma of loss of the dear ones. The gist of the topic is institutionalization of the concealed ego of the protagonist through the death of the Other. Thus the treatment concerns sorrows of the trauma which undergoes either positive dinamic of its overcoming, or a negative form of embedding into the loss. The author assumes, that in Lonergan’s film the second case is visually articulated, anyhow logically drawing to the positive vector disclosing the concealed identity of the protagonist. The arc of the hero is traced on three levels, that is the film composition, psychological discordance of the protagonist and the soundtrack as a certain subtext of the picture. The study is based on the sources discussing the problem in question: Ziegmund Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia, in which Freud argued that mourning comes to a decisive end when the subject severs its emotional attachment to the lost one, and on the works by Nicolas Abraham and Maria Török about mourning disorder (introjection versus incorporation). The composition of the film is structured around flashbacks explaining the reasons for a pervasive cloud of shame, sadness, and guilt that follows the protagonist in the mourning process. In his architecture of grieving the filmmaker actually describes the protagonist’s melancholia in Freudian terms as a painful depression without any concern towards the outside world. He is characterized by a loss of the ability to love, reticence in any activity and decreased self-criticism and craving for punishment. Anyhow the musical accompaniment not only illustrates the depressed protagonist state of mind but also - with Handel’s Messiah at the climax point predetermines the finale with his crucial changing.

According to recent research, video games are recognized as a new kind of art of the 21st century. Is it possible to distinguish the concepts of "entertainment" and "art" when dealing with this phenomenon? The purpose of this article is to analyze the significance of the game in contemporary society, to characterize the dominant features of "personal management" of a work of art, and to consider the influence of game aesthetics on the language of up-to-date cinema. The digital age, new technologies, computer modeling and virtual aesthetics modernized the classical thesis of "the life as a game" into a new philosophical concept. There are more and more attempts in succession to create a full-fledged virtual reality where a person could feel oneself to be an individualized god, commanding over all the processes taking place with the one and one’s life. The ultimate goal is the creation of such a global "game world" in which every person would be able to try oneself in any social role or avatar, building relationships with anyone, playing and enjoying it. So this desire for an interactive fusion of game forms with the objective reality that we are accustomed to is forming a rich and multilayered cultural platform nourishing diverse areas of contemporary art. The game industry has gone a long way of its development as a form of art. Nowadays video games and movies “imitate” each other and combine mixed aesthetic trends - the boundary between the Game and the Film is being increasingly blurred. On the one hand, games tend to cinema, using professional directing, scriptwriting and cast. On the other hand, mainstreamification of gaming technologies attracts many filmmakers looking for new artistic forms, concepts and visual mechanics that are interesting and relevant for contemporary mass audience.

The relevance of studying the contribution of artists and educators of Russian art for formation and development of the creative method of masters in Central Asian countries is due to the importance of this topic for solving the theoretical and practical problems of contemporary art history. Since the second half of the 20th century, the influence of Russian art school on art of the countries of the socialist community has increased. Russian universities have become base centers of higher art education. As a result, the main number of masters of art in Mongolia are graduates to Soviet and Russian art institutions. With appearance in 1935 of the studio "Mongolkino" in Ulan Bator, there was appear need for connoisseurs. Mongolian creators got the opportunity to obtain good education in the Soviet Union in VGIK. When learning students mastered programs aimed at comprehensive creative education. Priceless contribution to formation of the creative method of young masters was made by the artist-educators B.V. Dubrovsky-Eshke, F.S. Bogorodsky, Yu.I. Pimenov and others. Particular attention in pedagogical activity they drawn to the development and improvement of the creativity of the student. We were taught to think and feel images, constantly develop creative individuality, professionalism and at the same time preserve national roots. In the 50s, Mongolian painters Ochryn Myagmar and Purev Tsogzol were educated at VGIK. They passed the school of Soviet art and based on it stood at the origins of the Mongolian cinema. Artists work in various genres and techniques, in the mainstream of European artistic methods. Perfectly knowing how to draw, they write with oil and watercolor. For both artists, work on the nature is fundamental. With a perfect mastery of this creative approach, they remain deeply national masters. VGIK pedagogical school gave the basic footing for the development of cinema in Mongolia and further stimulated the creative potential of new generations of filmmakers. So the Mongolian visual and film art enriched with innovative artistic principles.

In the article the key ideas of Maurice Maeterlinck’s philosophy of art, inspired by the spirit of German idealism, European Romanticism and also mysticism and occultism are considered. On this basis his own original philosophical-aesthetic and artistic views which have laid down in a basis of philosophy of art of symbolism crystallize. The main problems interesting for Maeterlinck in this sphere are metaphysics of art and its philosophical-aesthetic aspects: silence, hidden, destiny, external and internal, madness, mystical ecstasy; essence of artistic image and symbol in art; aesthetic categories of beauty, sublime, tragical, comic; aesthetic ideal; nature of art novelty; relations between aesthetics and ethics. Artisticity, symbolization in art, suggestion, idealization, spirituality as the main attributes of authentic art, stylized poetic generalizations, laconism of a plot - these are the basis of Maeterlinck’s poetic world and his art-aesthetic principles which have become the art base for symbolist philosophy. Maeterlinck paid special attention to the art-aesthetic aspects of the art of theatre connected with creative credo of the playwright, his skill. He was also deeply engaged into exploration of the art influencing power as well as questions of aesthetic perception, empathies, and art hermeneutics. The major thrust of his philosophical-aesthetic research was that of an expectance of the approaching era of great spirituality and supreme mission of the artist-theurgist in it - in this respect Maeterlinck going his way, had a lot of common with the ideas of Paul Claudel, let alone representatives of Russian theourgistic aesthetics. In his poeticized meditations over the future of artistic culture Maeterlinck quite often acts as a teacher of life and, like described by him bees, collecting honey of hopes.

For a long time, Japanese cinema has been developing separately, mastering the specifics of the new art, which came from the West, and at the same time trying to solve within its framework the problem of "national identity". However, since the 1950s, Japanese cinema has become widely known abroad and is gaining recognition in the West. The present day no one doubts the huge contribution of Japanese filmmakers to the history of world cinema. Nevertheless, the study of Japanese cinema in Russian cinema theory still remains the prerogative of a few professionals who know the Japanese language and are closely acquainted with the Japanese mentality, culture and art, which exert a great influence on the artistic features of Japanese screen art. But in order to even more imbued with the originality of the approach to creating an artistic image in Japanese cinema, it is necessary to draw attention to one of the most important components of its structure, namely, the sound aspect, insufficiently studied in film theory. The novelty of the article is that it analyzes and classifies the sound features of some Japanese movies created in the second half of the 20th - beginning of the 21st centuries, in which the influence of traditional culture manifests itself quite clearly, but at the same time the presence of elements of the Western musical tradition is also noticeable, which reflects to a certain extent the process of transculturalism in cinema that is actual nowadays.

American historiography puts forward a theory which looks upon the US history as consisting of a row of cycles. The pattern was detected by thinkers and historians like Ralph W. Emerson, Henry B. Adams, Arthur M. Schlesinger and others. A cycle includes two contradicting phases lasting approximately 15-20 years each. Their character and content are defined differently - by social interest/personal interest, liberalism/conservatism, democracy/capitalism. The common ground between all the oppositions is the vision of the cyclic regularity nature. During the “social anxiety” periods the energy breaks out, the nation stirs to action (“Progressive Era” (1890s-1910s), “New Deal” (30s), turbulent years (60s). When the social organism gets tired it demands a break to recover. The “social rest” time begins (“Roaring Twenties”, presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961), “Me” Decade” (80s)). The article takes as a premise that cinema reflects the rythmic variations - at the level of ideas, themes, types of characters, genres, plots, a visual style. The theory is tested by means of examination of the western - the oldest national American genre. The article analyses the western subgenre - films telling of legendary frontier outlaws, namely Jesse James regarded as American Robin Hood. The “theory of cycles” optics enables to track the transformation of James myth and his image. The main part of the article is devoted to the landmark film of the contemporary “social anxiety” phase The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007, dir. Andrew Dominik). A thorough review of the polyphonic text demostrates that whichever interpretation is prefered the intention of the authors to a radical reconsideration of the well known myth is obvious. Correlations and contrasts with the other Jesse James’ films reveal that the view on the criminal number one directly corresponds with the historical phase.

With the invention of moving pictures, the creators sought to supplement them with sound. Even before the invention of cinemat, E. Reynaud in the optical theatre gave performances in which moving images were combined with sound. It was pre-cinema experience, which represented the theatre model of audiovisual show. The attempts to synchronize the dynamic images and sound were taken by T. Edison, S. Meshes, L. Gaumont, O. Kellum, E.Tigerstedt, J. Engel, G. Phocht and J. Massol. However, the systems suggested by these inventors were not perfect. An important step towards creation of a sound film was the appearance of the optical sound recording system Phonofilm designed by Lee de Forest. In 1923, he became acquainted with Brothers Fleischer, outstanding American animators. Together with H. Riesenfeld and E. Fadiman they organized Red Seal Pictures Corporation and began to shoot Ko-Ko Song Car-Tunes, which consisted of a series of animated shots Sing-alongs (featuring the famous «bouncing ball»). It was a kind of multimedia shots, as there was no plot, no character and no narrative structure. They were created basing on popular songs, but did not illustrate them. The Sing-alongs shots were produced for the audience to sing their favorite songs before the session, while reading the text of the songs from the screen. The animated ball bouncing on the syllables helped them to follow the rhythm of the melody. These films became the prototype of the modern karaoke and music animated shows. The series were released from May 1924 till September 1927. The Fleshers created more than 45 shots, more than 19 of which using the Phonofilm. The first sound animated shots where the images were synchronized with the sound and recorded on the same media, were released in 1925. The film Come to Travel on My Airship was the first where the speech was heard, and in the shot My Old House in Kentucky the Fleischers managed to synchronize the speech with the facial expressions of cartoon characters as they were speaking. When the animating and shooting technology changed, the film structure underwent changes too. Detailed animation parts with the story content appeared. The text animation became variable as well. Since the 1930s, the shots have included scenes with singers and jazz-bands. The animated film series Ko-Ko Song Car-Tunes shot by the Brothers Fleischer established the principle of movement and sound synchronism in the animation. They not only out paced the sound films by P. Terry and W. Disney, which were considered to be the first sound animation films for a long time, but also proved that the sound animation had been possible and the thirty-year era of the silent animation came to an end.

The article considers the problem of media studies in historical perspective. It is argued that the interdisciplinary approach includes media evolution, history and archeology among others. There exists a variety of versions of media history, in which the media development is described in different formats and contexts - from dropping names of the inventors and devices up to analysis of economic, social and cultural practices, but in each case the significance of media in human communication is emphasized. Speaking about the content of media it is necessary to take into consideration the channels of its distribution. Lisa Gitelman’s treatment of media history is presented in detail. She argues that media history should be comprised of separate cases - studies of specific media developments in a definite context - both local and temporal. Gitelman puts forward the idea to treat communication as a cultural practice and media history and media as unique and complex historical objects, socially significant communication structures including technological forms and corresponding protocols. If the term “history” is understood as something that happened in the past, then media is historical on different levels. First, media themselves originate from the past. Even the newest of the new media have their sources - from a social demand to a drawing board. Moreover, media are historical because they remind us of the past: people not only regularly confront the past by means of media representations - in books, films, etc., but also media use itself implicitly includes the contact with the past which produced this representation. If media are regarded as sites for forming meanings, in their analysis it is necessary to consider, to what degree meaning and their perception are defined or limited by technological specifications, how they are influenced by culture industry, combined interests of studios, publishers, Internet providers and a growing number of multinational conglomerates. Unlike static rigid and unchanging technology every new communication medium in its evolution undergoes a string of innovations, replacements and obsolescence.

The author studies the modern media environment, which reflects the problem of people with personality disorders of the autistic spectrum. The relevance of the article is determined by the severity of the social problems of the categories of «deviant people» in society and the insufficient degree of study of this context in contemporary media space. The novelty of the research consists in the author's attempt to investigate the role and importance of the media environment in the positioning of the phenomenon of social autism and humanization of society basing on cinema . Among the most socially important issues which are being reflected in contemporary media space the problems of disabled and deviant people take a major place. Contemporary cinema promotes the penetration and dissemination of socially significant ideas in society: responsibility, differentiation, humanism. Films about people with autism spectrum disorders are included in many films about the problem of sick people, people with disabilities and people with developmental features. The key idea of this large thematic group is to overcome the existing life circumstances and attempts to «live a full life». The ideological features of films about autistics, as the author assumes, differ from the conceptual field of films of the general thematic group. These features are: projection into society of the image of the savant - a highly functional autist and the fact that such people are «better» (more honest, naive, more moral) than «ordinary people». Proceeding from the increase in the total number of films devoted to this problem and their ideological homogeneity and uniqueness, the conclusion follows that a trend is being formed in society to humanize the social attitude to people with autism spectrum disorders.