https://sputniknews.in/20240914/the-biggest-movie-city-in-the-world-has-suddenly-sprang-up-near-moscow-8148663.html
The Biggest Movie City in the World Has Suddenly Sprang Up Near Moscow
The Biggest Movie City in the World Has Suddenly Sprang Up Near Moscow
Sputnik India
Moskino, the huge cinema city near Moscow, is already at almost full swing. That revelation sank in at the recent festival dedicated to the annual Day of... 14.09.2024, Sputnik India
2024-09-14T20:46+0530
2024-09-14T20:46+0530
2024-09-15T10:53+0530
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And then we discovered that the overall size of that cinema city will very soon make it, by territory and scale, the biggest movie production site in the world. In fact, it’s already #1.Russians like things big, and here, I suspect, we have a bad case of envy. Guess who we want to outpace, first by physical size, and then by value of the end product. It will have to be Bollywood and Hollywood, proudly says the report of the popular Moscow Komsomolets newspaper. While, to repeat, the territory of the mentioned movie cluster is already the biggest in the world.How about the quality of the facilities? And here we have to wipe the smirk from our faces, because what we see is impressive and top-class. We are talking about a territory about 400 hectares of previously empty lands, 27 kilometers from the Moscow city limits. And these movie folks have an airport and a railway station of their own.Planes and trains are there, too, though they do not fly or ride. Any cinema pro knows what it takes to obtain permission to do a scene in a real airport, on the tarmac or inside a terminal, with security people looking tense and grim. And here we have a whole hangar of facilities, together with registration desks and baggage ribbons moving along.There is a plane there, too, an old TU-154 that used to fly the previous Moscow Mayor. It had to be disassembled and then reassembled again in that wonderful Moskino place.The streets, of course, are there too, just like in Bollywood. We may step into Moscow of the 1940-s, a hugely popular setting for today’s script writers. And then there are Kremlin palaces of ancient times, partially made in stone, not cardboard. Also several streets of European cities, one full set of a Wild West American cowboy town. And more.The Moskino has been wonderfully alive for several months already, meaning there are movies in the making out there, and you can watch it from a respectful distance. You can see the first day of Second World War in a Moscow street of 1941, and the last day of the same war, with absolutely real tanks shelling the Reichstag in Berlin in May 1945. Both sets work at a walking distance from each other. And there are crowds of tourists trying hard not to get into the set and lose themselves into the past.That city is already partially paying for itself, since these tourists are coming here in droves, with new hotels and eateries being opened nearby. More, the cine-city is making production itself cheaper, saving the producers up to 30 per cent of costs, previously incurred by renting all kind of places everywhere around the land.There are at least several new and not necessarily Russian realities visible behind that news, and here we are talking about a possible new era in global arts scene, as well as in the world in general.Look at the money. The financial results of the industry in 2023 shows us that revenues from screening all kind of movies in Russia came back to the level of 2021 after a small slump in between. To remind, early 2022 was the time when Russia came under outright military attack from the West. Sanctions ensued, which meant, among other things, that no American movies were to be (legally) sold to Russia.So, equal revenues of the industry in 2021 and 2023 have an interesting catch, that is, that while previously Russian-made movies collected only 26 per cent on their own territory, in only two years they regained the market, owning 72 per cent of it. The rest went to the Indian, Chinese, Iranian and other producers.Economic protectionism is bad-bad-bad, of course, but losing national audience to foreign dream makers is not nice, either. Sanctions have revived Russian economy in many ways, movies being only one example. So, now there are veritable crowds of movie people all over the new Moskino city, as well as on other production platforms. They are optimistic and happy.And not only them. There is that correlation between the state of the national arts and the general state of the national mind. And it’s hard to say what comes first in that equation, a chicken or an egg.This September’s survey shows us that, today, 54 per cent of Russians are completely satisfied with their life, while 33 per cent are partially satisfied. So we have 87 per cent of those happy in a nation, that used to be in total pessimism until the moment the war started. To add, that’s the data of the Russian Levada Center, tagged as a foreign agent (simply speaking, not on the best terms with the government). But even a foreign agent cannot do anything about general and obvious trend, with all charts showing steady annual increase of optimism.And that’s what my good friend, a Russia Today columnist Irina Alsksnis, is saying about it: Have you noticed, that the modern culture, not only Russian, but the global one, is a culture of pessimism? Beauty is being persecuted, ugliness takes its place. Humanization of public narrative has suddenly turned into a cult of despair, spanning whole generations. Russia used to be a testing ground, where these new brainwashing technologies have been exercised with special vigor. The Russian society sank into somber mood around 2010, right when improvements in daily living became all too obvious. Moviemakers, artists, writers and the rest contributed heavily to that trend. And only now you may say that these people have suffered a defeat, concludes Irina.Almost the same discussion is taking place in the US, where people are wondering – when was the golden age of Hollywood movies, and was it really the happiest time in America in general? Citing the mixture of pre-millennium optimism and dread, the New York Times movie critic Alissa Wilkinson wrote, “That collective mood—one of hope and fear mashed together—made 1999 an incredible year at the movies.” Oh, no, says Peter Tonguette, the writer from The American Conservative, refusing to believe that “the cinematic offerings of 25 years ago were unusually good and hold up especially well”. To “want to go back” to an earlier, more wholesome era in American civic life, says he, is entirely salutary, but to romanticize the slop Hollywood produces one year over another? Thanks, but no thanks.Going back to our huge cinema city near Moscow, people working there are obviously full of optimism, together with most of the society. It would be interesting to see, what the critics will say about their movies in 25-years’ time.Dmitry Kosyrev is a Russian writer, author of spy novels and short stories. He also did columns for the Pioneer and Firstpost.com
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The Biggest Movie City in the World Has Suddenly Sprang Up Near Moscow
20:46 14.09.2024 (Updated: 10:53 15.09.2024) Moskino, the huge cinema city near Moscow, is already at almost full swing. That revelation sank in at the recent festival dedicated to the annual Day of Moscow, the city founded 877 years ago. While a year ago, Moskino was more of a huge construction site, this time we saw, in person or in TV reports, an already functioning movie factory.
And then we discovered that the overall size of that cinema city will very soon make it, by territory and scale, the biggest movie production site in the world. In fact, it’s already #1.
Russians like things big, and here, I suspect, we have a bad case of envy. Guess who we want to outpace, first by physical size, and then by value of the end product. It will have to be Bollywood and Hollywood, proudly says the report of the popular Moscow Komsomolets newspaper. While, to repeat, the territory of the mentioned movie cluster is already the biggest in the world.
How about the quality of the facilities? And here we have to wipe the smirk from our faces, because what we see is impressive and top-class. We are talking about a territory about 400 hectares of previously empty lands, 27 kilometers from the Moscow city limits. And these movie folks have an airport and a railway station of their own.
Planes and trains are there, too, though they do not fly or ride. Any cinema pro knows what it takes to obtain permission to do a scene in a real airport, on the tarmac or inside a terminal, with security people looking tense and grim. And here we have a whole hangar of facilities, together with registration desks and baggage ribbons moving along.
There is a plane there, too, an old TU-154 that used to fly the previous Moscow Mayor. It had to be disassembled and then reassembled again in that wonderful Moskino place.
The streets, of course, are there too, just like in Bollywood. We may step into Moscow of the 1940-s, a hugely popular setting for today’s script writers. And then there are Kremlin palaces of ancient times, partially made in stone, not cardboard. Also several streets of European cities, one full set of a Wild West American cowboy town. And more.
The Moskino has been wonderfully alive for several months already, meaning there are movies in the making out there, and you can watch it from a respectful distance. You can see the first day of Second World War in a Moscow street of 1941, and the last day of the same war, with absolutely real tanks shelling the Reichstag in Berlin in May 1945. Both sets work at a walking distance from each other. And there are crowds of tourists trying hard not to get into the set and lose themselves into the past.
That city is already partially paying for itself, since these tourists are coming here in droves, with new hotels and eateries being opened nearby. More, the cine-city is making production itself cheaper, saving the producers up to 30 per cent of costs, previously incurred by renting all kind of places everywhere around the land.
There are at least several new and not necessarily Russian realities visible behind that news, and here we are talking about a possible new era in global arts scene, as well as in the world in general.
Look at the money. The financial results of the industry in 2023 shows us that revenues from screening all kind of movies in Russia came back to the level of 2021 after a small slump in between. To remind, early 2022 was the time when Russia came under outright military attack from the West. Sanctions ensued, which meant, among other things, that no American movies were to be (legally) sold to Russia.
So, equal revenues of the industry in 2021 and 2023 have an interesting catch, that is, that while previously Russian-made movies collected only 26 per cent on their own territory, in only two years they regained the market, owning 72 per cent of it. The rest went to the Indian, Chinese, Iranian and other producers.
Economic protectionism is bad-bad-bad, of course, but losing national audience to foreign dream makers is not nice, either. Sanctions have revived Russian economy in many ways, movies being only one example. So, now there are veritable crowds of movie people all over the new Moskino city, as well as on other production platforms. They are optimistic and happy.
And not only them. There is that correlation between the state of the national arts and the general state of the national mind. And it’s hard to say what comes first in that equation, a chicken or an egg.
This September’s survey shows us that, today, 54 per cent of Russians are completely satisfied with their life, while 33 per cent are partially satisfied. So we have 87 per cent of those happy in a nation, that used to be in total pessimism until the moment the war started. To add, that’s the data of the Russian Levada Center, tagged as a foreign agent (simply speaking, not on the best terms with the government). But even a foreign agent cannot do anything about general and obvious trend, with all charts showing steady annual increase of optimism.
And that’s what my good friend, a Russia Today columnist Irina Alsksnis, is saying about it: Have you noticed, that the modern culture, not only Russian, but the global one, is a culture of pessimism? Beauty is being persecuted, ugliness takes its place. Humanization of public narrative has suddenly turned into a cult of despair, spanning whole generations. Russia used to be a testing ground, where these new brainwashing technologies have been exercised with special vigor. The Russian society sank into somber mood around 2010, right when improvements in daily living became all too obvious. Moviemakers, artists, writers and the rest contributed heavily to that trend. And only now you may say that these people have suffered a defeat, concludes Irina.
Almost the
same discussion is taking place in the US, where people are wondering – when was the golden age of Hollywood movies, and was it really the happiest time in America in general? Citing the mixture of pre-millennium optimism and dread, the New York Times movie critic Alissa Wilkinson wrote, “That collective mood—one of hope and fear mashed together—made 1999 an incredible year at the movies.” Oh, no, says Peter Tonguette, the writer from The American Conservative, refusing to believe that “the cinematic offerings of 25 years ago were unusually good and hold up especially well”. To “want to go back” to an earlier, more wholesome era in American civic life, says he, is entirely salutary, but to romanticize the slop Hollywood produces one year over another? Thanks, but no thanks.
Going back to our huge cinema city near Moscow, people working there are obviously full of optimism, together with most of the society. It would be interesting to see, what the critics will say about their movies in 25-years’ time.
Dmitry Kosyrev is a Russian writer, author of spy novels and short stories. He also did columns for the Pioneer and Firstpost.com
