| Last week, President Putin met with representatives of theater workers to calm passions over the upcoming theater reform. The representatives, appeased by the president, explained to their colleagues and the public that they would now think about the reform together, that the president understood the danger and would take action.
During these same days, passions began to swirl again in the film community - for a more private reason, however. The litigation surrounding the Cinema Center, which has lasted for many years, ended last year with the sale of shares belonging to the Union of Cinematographers of the Russian Federation, with the condition that the Cinema Museum will remain in the building until the state finds a new premises for it. And only when the move takes place will the RF IC receive the rest of the money for the shares - thus, Nikita Mikhalkov argued, the museum will be provided with a roof over its head. The leadership of the Federal Agency for Culture promised not to forget about the need to look for a place for the museum. But since, due to the recent administrative reform, there is still no clarity in the division of functions between the Federal Agency and the Ministry, no one is closely involved in the fate of the Cinema Museum. In addition to the Union of Cinematographers itself and its chairman. And so Naum Kleiman, the director of the museum, receives an offer from Nikita Mikhalkov, which, according to Mikhalkov, should suit everyone.
The essence of the proposal is this. It is known that it was decided to transfer the Gorky Film Studio to new owners - for now all shares of this enterprise belong to the state. Mikhalkov, it turns out, has already talked with President Putin about the fact that it would be good to oblige these new owners to allocate premises for a museum on the territory, and supposedly Putin has already instructed his administration to agree on this as a mandatory condition for the purchase of shares. Moreover, Mikhalkov believes that in this way the Cinema Museum will be located next door to VGIK, whose students, according to the head of the RF Investigative Committee, are the main visitors to the museum’s film programs.
Naum Kleiman did not like this proposal at all, in his opinion, placing a state museum on the territory of a private studio will not lead to anything good, this is a compromise, essentially no different from its current situation, and that it would be better then to place the museum’s funds at a film studio “ Mosfilm", which remains a state enterprise, but for a cinematheque designed for publicity and in the sensitive territory of Mosfilm is not entirely appropriate, it would be good to highlight the Khanzhonkov House, the former Moscow cinema, which, however, requires reconstruction and which is also claimed by many organizations. However, Mikhalkov responded to this that, firstly, Mosfilm will also soon be privatized, that the Khanzhonkov House is needed by the union itself - while the reconstruction of the House of Cinema takes place, and that in general it is better for Kleiman “not to be capricious”, but agree to what they give. On the same day, Kleiman received two more messages. One from the RF Investigative Committee with a proposal to send Putin a telegram of gratitude for taking care of the museum, and the second from the Ministry of Culture - it turns out that a letter from the Russian Investigative Committee was received there with a demand to urgently provide premises to the museum, since “the new owners of the Cinema Center demand that the museum be vacated as quickly as possible their area." Although, according to Kleiman, quite recently the current acting. Director of the Cinema Center Sergei Papin assured him that everything was in order. It should be noted here that no one knows who the new owner of the Cinema Center is. According to Kleiman’s information received “from colleagues from Bulgaria,” 51% of the shares belong to the Russian company “Harlequin” registered in Bulgaria, headed by a certain Russian citizen. (According to the Kommersant newspaper, this stake is owned by a certain Bulgarian company Fortis, and the remaining 17% is owned by Sergei Papin, acting director of the Cinema Center and director of the Harlequin entertainment center. 32% previously belonged to the RF IC and sold by him for $6 million went equally to two companies, one of which is called Logos).
Last summer, when the situation with the Cinema Museum was critical, the public came to its defense, and a rally was even held on Pushkin Square, which attracted hundreds of people. Letters came from all over the world in support of the museum. Everyone recalled the events related to the Paris Cinematheque, updated by Bertolucci’s film “The Dreamers”: the student revolution of 1968 began in Paris with a meeting of film fans opposing the dismissal of its director Henri Lanlgua. The fate of the Moscow museum did not lead to mass unrest - probably fortunately.
However, today the Paris Cinematheque is quietly moving from the center to the outskirts, where a new modern building has been built for it, and no one protests, because they do not feel any threat from it. The place of the Cinematheque in French culture has already been determined and the move will not change.
The Russian Film Museum is resisting not the move, but the danger of being caught between the dismantling of structures much more powerful than a small state institution, with small salaries and low ticket prices, interesting for several thousand marginalized people who are not considered by those in power either as an electorate or as consumers . Both the concern that Nikita Mikhalkov is ready to be proud of (he is not abandoning the museum, but is busy looking for options), and the concern of the Ministry of Culture, turn out to be only formal.
As in the case of the theater reform, it is clear that the authorities do not want a scandal or public discontent, but there is no feeling that the Cinema Museum, like all these theaters, studios, just museums, is truly needed by society. Although even for those who do not go there, their simple presence in the city is more important than the many elite offices and private clubs. Moscow is already turning into a gloomy city, where among the guarded mansions and tightly closed gates there is no life in the evenings, where behind the windows of expensive boutiques one can see empty halls with lonely sellers, where the signs of casinos and halls with slot machines are lit in neon, and all public institutions open mostly expensive restaurants. A cinema museum is not only halls where films are shown for film buffs, it is also a young audience that gathers in companies of similar interests, it is a place where people meet who will not go to smash windows or people of an objectionable nationality. The mayor of New York, a city with equally expensive rent, is especially concerned about preserving and opening small theaters in the center of Manhattan, because he understands that they improve the city's nightlife, make it safer and more attractive. Moscow, with its huge industrial zones and shopping areas, is a city poorly designed for private life, and yet no one really seems to care about the narrowing of cultural space in it. And the point is not that Nahum Kleiman and his employees do not want to sit on the margins. The fact is that all of us living in Moscow should be interested in, walking along the central streets, seeing smart faces, various posters, signs of libraries, theaters, studios, museums, that is, living in a lively, cheerful city, filled with young people, and not sneak around in the evenings between the tightly closed facades of office buildings, whose highly paid clerks have gone to elite fitness clubs and restaurants. And no president is capable of doing this for people if they themselves do not want to have it. With the same strength and passion with which pensioners protested against the abolition of benefits. Alena Solntseva
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