Message in pictures

The 17th international film festival “Message to Man” opened on June 15 in St. Petersburg. This year, more applications for participation were submitted than ever before --- 1,854 films from 74 countries, which is explained not only by the increase in the number of people wishing to make documentaries and animation films, but also by the fact that this year the conservative St. Petersburg forum is accepting works filmed on film for the first time. "digital". As a result of the selection, about 24 documentaries, 25 short fiction and 14 animated films remained in the international program. Among them, the winner will be determined, receiving the Golden Centaur Grand Prix and a prize of 50 thousand dollars.

The most intense competition, according to Mikhail Litvyakov, general director of the Message to Man festival, is expected in the animation program, where very famous animators, such as animator and documentarian Joel Simon, and Russian stars Konstantin Bronzit and Alexander Petrov, compete.

But the chairman of the jury of the international competition, Konstantin Lopushansky, pins his greatest hopes on short feature films, which, unfortunately, in our country are mainly represented by educational works and are rarely truly interesting.

Another jury, headed by director Valentina Gurkalenko, will select the winners of the national documentary film competition "Window to Russia".

Special programs of the Message to Man festival this year offer retrospectives of the classic of world documentary Richard Leacock, as well as Jerzy Hoffman, Harry Bardin, Vladimir Kobrin; Polish documentaries from the second half of the 1950s; “Hungary in short films” and others.

And for ordinary viewers, a surprise was the nightly screenings at the House of Cinema (at midnight, two and four o’clock), which show the best animated films that have been in competition over the entire 17 years of the existence of the Message to Man festival.

The results will be announced on June 22.

Gleb MYSHKIN