Russian films are shown in America

film festival
Russian Cinema Week has begun in New York. ALEXEY Y-KARAKHAN is observing the reaction of Americans to Russian cinema.
A couple of years ago, this event was almost the only legal opportunity to see Russian films in the United States. As you know, even the main domestic blockbuster of the last decade, “The Barber of Siberia” by Nikita Mikhalkov, never reached the United States. But in the last two years there has been a real breakthrough. Several Russian films were released in American distribution, albeit limited, at once - “Cuckoo” by Alexander Rogozhkin, “House of Fools” by Andron Konchalovsky, “Oligarch” by Pavel Lungin, and “Russian Ark” by Alexander Sokurov collected $3 million, quite decent for an art-house film. Russia's Oscar-nominated film "The Return" by Andrei Zvyagintsev has already been bought outright by American distributors, and this is how the organizers explained the absence of "The Return" from the festival program. But it included other notable films of last year, including “Ice”, “Kamikaze Diary”, “Carmen”, “Walk”, “Cinema About Cinema”, “Old Women”.
The opening of the festival in one of the largest multiplexes in New York was attended, according to the Russian Consul General Vyacheslav Pavlovsky, “mainly by representatives of the large and influential Russian-speaking community of the city.” The culmination of the ceremony was the presentation of an award to Rock Briner for the contribution of his father, a native of Vladivostok and star of “The Magnificent Seven” Yul Briner, to world cinema. After the awards and speeches, the audience was able to see Vadim Abdrashitov’s new film “Magnetic Storms”.
The American press did not pay much attention to “Magnetic storms”, but wrote a lot about “Boomer” by Pyotr Buslov. Photos from this blockbuster illustrate almost all the notes about the Russian festival published in the American media. In particular, The New York Times recommends that its readers watch this film first: “Judging by festival films, one can assume that modern Russia is a brutal place where people live, poisoned by irreversible violence: physical and emotional.” And in general, Russian films evoke mixed feelings among viewers. For example, after watching “Magnetic Storms,” in which provincial Russian proletarians spend most of the screen time, like the heroes of Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York,” hitting each other with iron rods, an elderly Russian-speaking couple argued about whether this really happens in distant Russia or they are still being bullied.

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 198 dated October 29, 2003, p. 21

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In New York they beat our people