news: The Moscow Film Museum

From:
Nikita Mikhalkov

Attn.: Mr. Vladimir Putin
President of the Russian Federation

Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich,

We are hereby applying to you in the context of a difficult situation with the Cinema Museum, which is the only museum of this type in our country.

The State Central Cinema Museum, now falling under the system of Ministry of Culture and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation, has turned out to be homeless. The building of Kinocenter located on Krasnaya Presnya was formerly constructed by the USSR Union of Film Makers with the aim to do lecturing and perform outreach activities. For 12 years the above-mentioned building has been the subject-matter of property right cases between the Union of Film Makers of Russia and Kinocenter Closed Joint Stock Company. At present, Kinocenter is in fact owned by the private companies which obtained majority shareholding from the Kinocenter former management. The said private companies regard as nothing more than a recommendation the decision to reserve the premises occupied by the Cinema Museum until it receives its own building as approved by the VI Convention of the Union of the Film Makers of Russia.

On the other hand, premises assigned for the Cinema Museum in 1989 do not match with the scope and nature of its performance. There is not enough room in narrow archives for precious fund assemblages that have been collected for 15 years. As for the permanent exhibition, it is not designed to be located at Kinocenter at all.

The "changing film exhibitions", specific for the Cinema Museum (exhibiting the classics of home and world cinema as well as the best works of modern cinema art, arranged by the Museum in partnership with the Russian cinema archives, embassies and cultural centers of foreign countries), are staged in Kinocenter minor cinema halls. However, in many cases the cinema halls cannot hold all spectators coming from all quarters of Moscow and surrounding areas to see the unique repertory. The Cinema Museum has acquired a good reputation worldwide due to the promulgation of Russian cinema classics.

What the Museum needs now is not so much that keeping narrow archives and halls of Kinocenter. The Russian cinema art, which is famous for its creative traditions and is recovering thanks to young talents, deserves a full-fledged museum building with a permanent exhibition and a system of modern and technologically intensive cinema halls and fund archives.

Only such a museum will be able to pursue the tasks of preserving the domestic cinema culture in full and to actively promote the shaping of a humane and tolerant social society, and to acquaint Russian people with the best specimen of world cinema and foreign spectators with the achievements of Russian cinema.

Only such a museum, available (in terms of its location and financially) for all inhabitants and guests of our capital, will be comparable to similar cinema museums successfully working in Berlin and Frankfurt, Potsdam and Munich, London and Turin, Paris and Lyon, Amsterdam and Tokyo, museums that are under construction in Helsinki, Los Angeles, and other cities in the world.

The Russian national film industry will mark its 100th anniversary in 2008. This date is perfectly fit for the task of constructing a new building for the Cinema Museum (or improving one of the old buildings) in Moscow and further establishment of its branches or equivalents ("cinematheques") in the largest regional centers of Russia.

You are hereby kindly requested to instruct the Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography under the Ministry of Culture and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation to settle the issue relating to the building for the Cinema Museum and to have this issue controlled by the Administration of the President.

Sincerely yours,
Signed:
N. S. Mikhalkov
Chairman of the Union of Film Makers of Russia

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