The article is devoted to a comparative analysis of Boris Vasiliev's novel “I was not on the list” (1974) and its film adaptation “I am a Russian Soldier” (1995, dir. Andrey Malyukov). As a result of a critical comparison of the images and conflicts of the two works, the author comes to the conclusion that B. Vasiliev's story “Did not appear in the lists” tells about the feat of the real unknown defenders of the Brest fortress. Andrey Malyukov's film based on the material of B. Vasiliev's story about the defense of the Brest fortress tells a completely different story — about the trampled dignity of the Russian army, which, starting with perestroika in the media space, becomes the object of ridicule, criticism and vilification. And also about the Russian people, to whom, under the guise of abstract humanism, a sense of guilt for the very fact of their existence begins to be imposed.

The article examines the artistic aspects of presenting the world duality as exemplified by the film ‘‘Mr. Decorator’’ (1988) directed by O. Teptsov. The subject of the study is the world-duality as both an artistic device and a special case of the universal duality motif in world mythology and literature. The principle of duality most accurately reflects the phenomena and processes of the surrounding world and makes it possible to expand the iconic aesthetic picture of a work of art.

The article studies the evolution of representing the connection between man and the earth in Russian cinema. The author argues that this evolution has gone through three stages: an attempt to conquer the earth (the Collectivization and the Virgin Lands campaign), the awareness of the earth’s power over man in the 1960s and 1970s, and the perception of the complete disruption between man and the earth in the 1970s and 1980s. The logic of the birth and death cycle of ‘pochvennik’ cinema in the USSR is established through the examples of a number of films.

The article is a content analysis of texts from the magazine “Soviet Screen” dedicated to foreign cinema in the period from 1925 to 1991 inclusive. When presenting the results of content analysis of texts, the study authors used specific units of counting. They became the following semantic units: frequency of publications related to such genres as film reviews, surveys, analytical articles, articles on the history of cinema, creative portraits of filmmakers, interviews; the percentage of analyzed messages, that is, texts about Western cinema in relation to the total text array of a given publication. The counting procedure complied with standard methods of classification into selected groups using the compilation of special tables (including units of analysis and counting, frequency of use).

This article analyzes the creative method of A. Zvyagintsev in the painting “Dislike”. In the process of research, techniques similar to the practice of Bertold Brecht are revealed. The work demonstrated various techniques of Brecht's “alienation”, including the parabola, the “herald”, the destruction of the “fourth wall”, etc., which are used in his film by director A. Zvyagintsev. As a result of his work, the author of the article concludes about the special use of these techniques in the creative method of the director.

The article examines the connection between realistic and conventional artistic techniques used in the films of film director S.I. Rostotsky with dramaturgy: action, characters, genre features using the example of the films “On the Seven Winds” (1962), “We’ll Live Until Monday” (1968), “And the dawns here are quiet...” (1972). The author of the work uses the concepts of realistic and conventional techniques to describe the uniqueness of the director’s creative method. As a result of the article, the author comes to the conclusion that the style of S. Rostotsky’s films is unique not only due to certain semantic and dramatic features, but also to the combination of two types of visual techniques.

The article analyzes the phenomenon of resacralization in postmodern filmmaking, namely, in the New French Extremity films. Resacralization is a kind of human psyche’s response to desacralization predominant in postmodern discourse. Using French new transgressive cinema as a case study, the article highlights the internal processes causing the spontaneous restoration of the fundamental boundary between the sacred and the profane, erased in the modern era.

The article examines crime as a challenge to the transcendent, i.e. the divine, in an attempt to establish contact with it. The author proposes to regard “The House that Jack Built” by Lars von Trier in terms of the correlation between the concepts of “sin” and “crime” and to look upon the protagonist’s misdeeds as the proof of not only arrogance, but also the desire to engage in a dialogue with the divine.

The article analyses the image of the monsters in Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend and its three big screen adaptations. It studies the change in features and interpretations of the monstrous antagonists but also of the monstrous protagonist for the purpose of actualising the original text in cultural and historical context. The conclusion is drawn about the reasons behind these transformations, as well as supposed attitude towards the main conflict of the work.

In the modern world, the main processes that occur in the field of culture and art are somehow connected with digitalization. It becomes obvious that there is a need for a theoretical understanding of the events taking place in the media environment and their structuring, followed by the identification of characteristics of the forms of the so-called new cinema or post-cinema. The current work involves a conceptual understanding of the phenomenon of post-cinema and the identification of interactions with new media through immersive practices of involving the viewer, both inside the artistic space of the film (reducing narrative, leveling genre structure, new forms of use of pre-digital media), and through external manifestation on the part of the viewer (streaming, the ability to influence the plot, AR and VR technologies, gaming and so on).

This article is devoted to a structure of an agrarian sacrifice ritual in a film’s narration, basing on such films as “Earth” by A.P. Dovzhenko and “Ryazan women” by O.I. Preobrazhenskaya. During research main aspects of the ceremonial structure were characterized. It includes: participants of the ceremony, a presence of a deity, a purpose of the sacrifice, its motive and an object of sacrifice. It deals with a dramatical situation of “crisis of ceremony”, causing a struggle between “old” and “new” priesthood for the right to actualize a myth of the Earth.

The article is devoted to the study of the problems of representation of the image of genius in biographical feature (staged) cinema. As part of the research, using the example of the dramaturgy of the films “Sin” (2019, directed by A.S. Konchalovsky) and “Andrey Rublev” (1966, directed by A.A. Tarkovsky), an attempt is made to demonstrate specific principles and dramatic techniques with which the task of artistic research of the phenomenon of human genius is solved in biographical films.

This article is an attempt to theoretically comprehend the legacy of the famous canadian animator Norman McLaren, who worked in the field of abstract animation for many years, from his student days in the 1930s to the late 1970s. Apart from a brief creative sketch, this article includes two main sections devoted to the genesis of image and plot in McLaren's works — both animation and ‘photographic’ ones. McLaren wanted to create entirely new film canon, based equally on abstract and realistic basics. Summarized, McLaren works are pivotal in the context of the evolution of avant-garde animation, both in the construction of imagery and in the rehabilitation of narrative, previously almost entirely excluded from the realm of absolute film. McLaren's many years of creative activity are evaluated as a unified ethical and aesthetic doctrine. Along the whole article various critical approaches to his work being observed and analyzed.