The latest history of Russian cinema covers the period from the 1990s to the 2010s. Thus, cinematography that becomes the subject of film studies reflects many complex socio-cultural phenomena and processes, including cardinal changes in the film industry that have occurred over these decades. Consideration of the recent Russian cinema involves addressing such key aspects as sociocultural changes in society and the logic of the development of cinema itself. In addition to analyzing the artistic originality of the film process and trends in its development, it is necessary to address the issues of industry management, film production, film distribution, without understanding which it is impossible to fully imagine the essence of the development of Russian cinema. The phenomenon of the regional cinemas of Yakutia, Tatarstan, Kalmykia, Buryatia, Bashkortostan and other regions of Russia is among the most fruitful trends of the national cinema. Since the beginning of the 2010s, the most important ethical quality of the hero of the Russian historical and biographical film has become patriotism, the conjugation of the vector of his personal destiny with the vector of development of the state, nation, people, of the general cultural process inextricably linked with the history of the country. Modern processes associated with both local and global changes in society, with the appeal to enduring moral and cultural values, undoubtedly affect the film process, stimulate the search for new expressive means of the cinema language that meet the current needs and demands of society. The article concludes that at the current stage, Russian film research has a large amount of knowledge about the development of the film process in the last three decades, as well as scientific potential and modern methodological tools in order to actualize the idea of the development of domestic cinema in its various aspects (both artistic and organizational and production) in new theoretical studies.

The author reflects on the creative evolution of Russian documentaries of the last decade. Making use of extensive factual material, the author considers the peculiarities of the thematic space prevalent in these years, in particular, the evolution of the traditional model of studying reality in terms of “society — individual” into a new one focusing on the emotional world of a single individual.
Movies that reflect different facets of social life, drift away from the analysis of the essence of problems and focus on the emotional experience of a person immersed in these problems.Among these movies are “Afterburner. Return” by N. Gugueva, “Catastrophe” by A. Rudnitskaya, “Border condition” by A. Samoilov and others. The new approach requires different conceptual principles of representing reality and human personality. The world of a modern person is made up of feelings and fate of a particular character, which do not dissolve in society, but is the essence of his individual life journey. And therefore, the key question of human existence comes to the fore: with what purpose have you come into this world? The complexity, and sometimes the agony of choosing one's own unique path becomes the top priority for many characters. The study of the creative experience of the decade brings forth problems related to the figure of the author, his objectives and creative efforts in bringing his work to life. Examples of original creative tasks that the authors set for themselves (V. Kosakovsky and his movies “Viva antipodes” and “Aquarelle”) stand out in the diverse stream of movies.
Noteworthy is the search for a new understanding of the historical past which is not treated as a sum total of events, but as the emotional life of people (S. Debizhev’s experience in the movies “Hot Chaos” and “The Last Knight of the Empire”), bold experimental intrusions into the process of recording reality, far removed from the traditional narrative. Present-day reality is not chronical, but rather eventful, it is tinged by human emotions, and the “color” of feelings of a given moment of existence constitutes the real truth of history

The article examines the strategies of modern mass cinema in relation to history, aimed at displacing the historical content while directly referring to the past. It reveals that for this purpose the method of reducing the historical time right down to freezing it is used, so that the historical reality is presented in the film as a static “picture”, a motionless visual image, endowed with super-realistic features.
Scrupulous study of the subject environment, its "authenticity" allow to create a kind of visual attraction that always wins the acclamation of the viewers. Recognizable touches of the past vividly convince the audience of the historical veracity of the vision.
On the other hand, the centripetal spatial model effectively works to displace history so as to focus the viewer's attention on the main event of the story, its bright dynamic climax, which develops rapidly within the "empty" core, in the center of the space completely free of history. Here comes the time of Kairos, the god of fortune. The hero achieves victory by the grace of providence. This is a special trick of modern mass culture, convincing the average man that anyone can draw a winning ticket. Thus, the main event of the film, its climax turning around the hero’s fate has nothing to do with History. That is how, for instance, the film "Upward Motion" by Anton Megerdichev is structured.
The article offers a film analyzing methodology which combines the analysis of the film’s artistic space with the temporal analysis based on understanding history as a process.
Thus, when identifying the centripetal model of space in the structure of a cinematic work, it is important to pay close attention to the core, the center of attraction of the main story lines. In the auteur cinema, centripetal models are used to displace history, but here the historical is displaced by the sacred. This hypothesis requires a separate study.

The article is devoted to the dramatic analysis of such a landmark film as “Casablanca” by M. Curtiz. The author looks into the picture from the standpoint of a heroic legend, the structure of which was revealed by J. Campbell in his book “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”. However, the analysis is carried out not only based on the “monomyth”, the author turns to such a type of film composition as the plot composition, which involves dividing the film according to the following parts of the plot: exposition, plot, development, climax, denouement, finale, their location relative to each other and their connection.
This synthetic approach which takes into account not only the American method of plot construction but also theoretical developments of domestic film dramaturgy permits to recreate a holistic image of the film and to go into details about its scenario structure.
The study is quite relevant, as students-playwrights and actively practicing screenwriters often face the problem of plot construction. The author hypothesizes that there are some universal scenario laws permitting to keep the viewer interested throughout the whole picture, from its first frame to the last one, and tries to prove it by parsing the plot-forming scenes of the film "Casablanca", defining the genre of the film as a whole, revealing its central thematic contradiction or theme and presenting the idea of the film with a fresh perspective.
The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that the laws of the plot construction, being universal, are considered as a fairly stable system of the film’s semantic coordinates, in the least affected by specific taste preferences which are closely associated with art as such. And, since the theory of screenwriting is closely related to its practice, we may appeal to these laws and argue that their knowledge is not only a significant help when working on a film script, but also the most important condition for its creation.

The article intends to shed light on the role of color as the essential film medium in the figural reflection of reality. Given its potent artistic and figurative value, color allows filmmakers to augment and transform the onscreen reality redefining it and making space for a subjective view.
The increasingly larger role of color and its impact on the viewer under the current evolution of cinema and television is one of the key factors of this work. A cineaste ought to appreciate the phenomenon of color and the modes of its application in the course of narrative. Color can bring the image closer to reality or create a whole new, illusory world, transfer the viewer to a universe of fantasies and symbols. In that case, the imaginative form replaces the reflection of reality and becomes an integral part of the film and television production as a whole. The use of a random color may bring to nought the semantic and artistic solution of the film.
With a conscious choice and competent use, the color palette launches a certain response of the audience, makes good points, typifies the characters, evidentiates the changes or arcs throughout the narrative, creates the mood and sets the style of the whole film. Therefore, the study of the general theory of color and of its role in the system of cinematographic art devices is an important part of theoretical education of cineastes who will be later using their knowledge in practice while working on their film projects.

Proceeding from Andrei Tarkovsky’s view of the world, this thesis begins by tracing the source of his thoughts that integrate Christian, Buddhist, pagan and mystical notions which sometimes seem incompatible. From individual human souls to problems at the global level, his films, which are associated with the theme of ‘salvation’, were generally viewed as films with Christian themes.
However, his films feature a Buddhist approach as well as pagan elements that are opposite to the Christian doctrine from the standpoint of traditional theology.
Therefore, it is essential to reexamine the sources of his thoughts and his view of the world, which have various religious characteristics. This thesis examines Tarkovsky’s works at various levels by analyzing his films in detail with reference to Eastern and Western religions and philosophy. In addition, the combination of his spiritual philosophy and his visual aesthetics together with the macroscopic frame that is also known as the allness from the Eastern and Western mystic philosophy will be reviewed.
Tarkovsky’s world view, which includes the oriental and western religions and ideas, demonstrates connections with various views of mystic and spiritual philosophers, including Rudolf Steiner and Georgii Gurdzhiev. He was also very interested in Rudolf Steiner’s philosophy known as “spiritual science”. The expression of Laozi’s “virtues” or Buddhist philosophy in his films is also a proof that he had made efforts to integrate Eastern philosophy with Western philosophy.
All his life Tarkovsky had strived to reach spiritual ascension by escaping from the material and physical world, returning to the One which was the cause of existence, and gazing toward the absolute world. Along this path Tarkovsky had come to believe that the gospel truth corresponds to goodness and beauty, and at this point, his aesthetics meets with his ethics.

The author focuses on Peter Greenway's film Drowning by Numbers which all the while remained by and large off the researchers' radars. The full-fledged analysis of the film’s aesthetics implies revealing the mechanics of balancing the architectonics of film matter both in the semantic and the visual contexts, taking into account the redundancy of meanings, accents, various stylistic and genre elements typical for this director.
The split-screen as a tool for organizing the intra-frame matter is for P. Greenway a kind of brand identity. However, the director prefers not to limit his poetics to one genre and style, nor to a universal artistic device. In Drowning by Numbers there is no split-screen in its traditional sense, however, the architectonics of the film matter evidentiates its complex structure, semantic segmentation and strong correlation of the segments, which allows to regard the frame architectonics in the context of the split-screen effect with connotations inherent in the tool. Forming the intra-frame contents in such an unconventional way, Peter Greenaway intensifies and expands the film space without loading its visual solution; he creates a close “three-dimensional” structure, arranges the semantic strata, fits the objects in the exact grid of a frame. In Drowning by Numbers the split-screen effect with its implied boundaries holds up the multi-dimensional aesthetics of the film including elements of postmodernism, symbolism and, more so, of decadence — with its inherent fascination with death and non-existence, its abysm of the unconscious and its static beauty. Typically, the film's characters move slowly, strike attitudes and put others to death emotionless. It appears that the decadence aesthetics proves to be the most emphatic in this work, and that’s what implicitly requires a split-screen structure of the intra-frame space.

2022 marks the 110th anniversary of the birth of one of the most iconic film directors in the world, Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2008). The object of analysis in the article is the work of this outstanding Italian film director, screenwriter and publicist.
His contribution to the history of world screen culture is undeniable. Coming to the world of cinema on the eve of the fall of the fascist dictatorship, having mastered the aesthetics of “film truth” as the basis of neorealism, Antonioni eventually becomes a prominent representative of screen existentialism, in his work he addresses complex problems of the spiritual and social existence of man in the bourgeois world. M. Antonioni’s creative directorial style takes shape in his non-fiction films. His directorial debut was the documentary “People of the Po Valley”, which he began filming in 1943 and completed in 1947. This picture, as well as his subsequent works (“Superstition”, “Dustmen”, “The House of Monsters”, etc.), is “a peculiar version of neorealism in documentary cinema”.
On this basis a kind of “Antonioni” touch and language of his films started to take shape; the process of forming the creativity philosophy, the artist’s view of the world, society, man was launched.The author of the article proceeds from the premise that the understanding of the tragic loneliness of man, his “uncommunicativeness”, “alienation”, being an existential foundation of Antonioni’s films, is the result of his observations on the life of Italian society not only at the time after the defeat of fascism and the fall of the Mussolini regime, but also during the period of social “stabilization”.
This is the central theme in his main films of the 1950s and 1960s: “The Cry”, “The Adventure”, “The Night”, “The Eclipse”, “Red Desert”. A special place in his work is occupied by the films shot outside of Italy: “Blowup”, “Zabriskie Point”, “Professione: Reporter” (“The Passenger”).
In the 21st century mankind has to face new global problems and challenges of civilization. But the spiritual life of a person, as well as the problems of his relationship with society, the environment, his adjustment to new communicative conditions make the work of Michelangelo Antonioni ever so relevant and socially significant.

Cultural history is by nature a continuous national and international dialogue. Thus, works by the Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov feature original interpretations of certain motives from the writings of the English science fiction classic author Herbert Welles. In turn Bulgakov’s legacy gets newfound relevance in creative works by succeeding generations, including masters of film adaptation. To a large extent screen interpretations of literature are defined by the social hermeneutic horizon, that is by the prevailing sentiment in this or that society at a certain moment in time. It’s no coincidence that one of the best works of Soviet fiction, the dystopic satire “Heart of a Dog” turns out to be relevant in different countries at the time of social and political upheavals. First Bulgakov’s story is made into a film during the “low-level civil war” in Italy in the 70’s, and later in the Soviet Union during “perestroika” in the second half of the 80’s.
Making use of hermeneutic and comparative methods the article analyses both adaptations — the one by the Italian director Alberto Lattuada in 1976 and the other made by the Soviet director Vladimir Bortko in 1988. The emphasis is made on Lattuada’s version as his works remain mostly outside the sphere of interest of cinema studies in Russia.
The article confirms that in accordance with the spirit of the time Bortko basically reconstructs Bulgakov’s story whereas Lattuada prefers a rather unexpected angle. He keeps the story’s anti-revolution pathos. The adaptation is skeptical, at times sarcastic, about radical social engineering from “below”. At the same time the director introduces the basic idea of “The Island of Dr. Moreau” by Welles, i.e. the moral aspect of a scientific experiment. Creating a pathetic, even likable central character, “a person of little mark” Poligraf Poligrafovich Sharikov, Lattuada brings the story up to date, drawing attention to moral responsibility of contemporary science. The adaptation turns out to be especially relevant in view of the sharp rise in the interest in the issues of bioethics.

One of the most provocative directors of our time, Lars von Trier, often rethinks established concepts in his works. In his films an important role is played by religious concepts, the representation of which changed along with the change of the director's religious views. The transcendental and religious components of Lars von Trier's films often become the subject of research, but up till now there has been no specific study tracing the evolution of the director's idea of a particular concept.
In this article the author uses the example of «Breaking the Waves» (1996), «Dogville» (2003) and «Melancholy» (2011), which reflect different periods in Lars von Trier's life and work, and analyzes the transformations of his representation of a key Christian concept of «sacrifice». The researcher has come to the conclusion that in the early period of his work, the director understood «sacrifice» in terms of traditional religious ideas as a redemptive sacrifice in the name of someone, at the same time Lars von Trier filled this concept with new meaning, elevating to the level of sacrifice something that is traditionally considered a sin.
In «Dogville», the director desacralizes this concept, suggesting ideological reasons for the «sacrifice» and focusing on its meaninglessness and even harmfulness.
Finally, in the later period of his work, Lars von Trier deconstructs the concept of «sacrifice», abandoning the idea of a redemptive sacrifice. Thus, it can be concluded that the concept of "sacrifice" in the director's work has gone all the way from being treated in terms of traditional religious beliefs to being deconstructed and completely rejected.

The article reflects on the complicated relations between film industry and television in the field of content over the period of their coexistence. Since the outset and throughout three main generations of TV history studios have stayed the principal suppliers of content to feed the ever growing programming traffic of broadcast stations, cable and satellite channels and now internet film services, particularly streaming platforms. The study researches the first two periods of TV evolution concerning its contacts with Hollywood. The peculiarities of relations between two leading media technologies in the age of the internet will be examined later.
It is pointed out that these ties have not been developing smoothly. At first studios looked down upon the start-up and did not consider it equal, but pretty soon they had to change their opinion and see the advantages of cooperation with the growing competitor. They realized that despite the fact that TV drew from theaters a big part of the audience, it may become an important means of film distribution and additional source of revenues. Pay film channels of different formats and specialties grew in number and needed more and more content. In the 1980s video players — at first cassette, then DVD — opened before the users wide range of options to watch whatever and whenever they want, not limited by TV schedule. Nowadays the internet provides streaming service subscribers with even more freedom.
However, the article agues, that proliferation of channels launched the process of audience fragmentation, when once monolithic mass of TV viewers began breaking into numerous small groups, united by interest, gender, age, education and other socio-demographic characteristics, thus depriving people of the so-called “social glue”, but at the same time providing them with the option of choice”.