Russia’s Film Czars Revive Sad Cinemas

In the cavernous lobby of the 89-year-old Khudozhestvenny cinema at the head of historic Arbat Street, plush crimson theater chairs nest in rows across the marble floor like dominoes as they await installation.

Brass-edged glass ticket booths and a state-of-the-art sound system are the next investments planned at the 600-seat cinema--one of only a handful in Moscow drawing enough moviegoers to bankroll its own floor-to-ceiling renovation.

But the movers and shakers of Russia’s revitalized film world have suddenly hit on the connection between the box office and creature comforts in this age of more discriminating post-Communist consumers. With top-notch new cinemas like Kodak Kinomir and modernized old movie houses like Khudozhestvenny drawing capacity audiences while the dowdy majority of theaters sit empty, filmmakers and financiers are joining forces to ensure that moviegoing explodes like popcorn.

Spurred by the promise of soaring ticket sales as Russians regain enough disposable income to resurrect their Soviet-era habit of taking in an occasional movie, investors are drafting plans for new multiplex cinemas across the country and gearing up for what Russia’s most renowned director predicts will be the film industry’s “Klondike.”

“What’s the sense of creating great films if people have to watch them on tattered screens, in the cold, seated on rock-hard chairs and catching a whiff of the theater’s ancient toilet?” asks Oscar-winning director Nikita Mikhalkov, newly named head of the Russian Cinematographers Union and chief crusader for resurrecting his countrymen’s moviegoing passion.

“The experience of watching a film begins with the cinema environment, and most of our theaters are horrid,” says the mustachioed director, whose Stalinist-era memoir, “Burnt by the Sun,” won the Academy Award for best foreign-language film in 1995. “Bringing them up to world standard is not a matter of choice.”

Oscar Winner’s Latest Mission

Now the most sought-after filmmaker in Eastern Europe, Mikhalkov has embarked on a mission to attract local and foreign investors to bring Russia’s 2,000 urban movie theaters up to Western comfort levels.

Most of the cinemas built during the Soviet era, when film was strongly supported by the Communist government as a means of mass propaganda, have fallen into disrepair as state subsidies have disappeared. Some rent out space in their lobbies to vendors of clothing, cosmetics and even furniture, clogging the premises with noisy distractions that further discourage filmgoers.

The handful of modern new movie theaters, on the other hand, are packed with young Russians. Kinomir, just off bustling Tverskaya Street in the heart of Moscow, was developed by Eastman Kodak and L.A.-based Golden Ring Entertainment and opened in October 1996.

The glittering complex, which shows first-run films and is outfitted with contoured plum armchairs, sold 630,000 tickets through the end of last year, selling out most evening showings of Russian-subtitled American movies and averaging 70% occupancy even for less successful films, says Anna Yegorova, deputy marketing director at the theater. On Thursday, Kinomir will host the Moscow premiere of “Titanic.”

Kinomir’s success, despite tickets priced as high as 70 rubles ($11.67), has persuaded some Russian entrepreneurs to cobble together financing for other first-class theaters.

The media arm of financial baron Vladimir Gusinsky has announced a $120-million project to build or retrofit dozens of cinemas in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan and Yekaterinburg.

Sergei D. Livnev, the brash young president of Gorky Film Studios, has embarked on a veritable storming of the Russian countryside with design concepts and financing packages for a network of new movie houses stretching from Moscow to the Far East.

Even the remote northwestern city of Kaliningrad got a windfall of improvements this month when director James Cameron donated three tons of new sound equipment to the shabby Darya cinema for the Russian debut of his “Titanic.”

Underwater scenes for the blockbuster were filmed with equipment developed by scientists in the Baltic enclave, and Cameron wanted to show his gratitude by ensuring that locals could enjoy the film in its full splendor.

“There are good prospects for upgrades and new construction through cooperative ventures like that one,” observes Livnev.

Touring Festival Planned for Spring

Livnev plans to travel with a touring film festival across Russia in the spring to inform potential investors of the opportunities for building modern, moneymaking cinemas for as little as $1.5 million.

“Because most of the existing facilities are so huge and in such bad condition, it is often less expensive to build a multiplex cinema from scratch,” Livnev says.

Golden Ring is also “aggressively pursuing multiplex development in Russia,” says the company’s Moscow director, Paul Heth, although he declines to discuss specifics of the expansion plans.

Filmmakers and developers are bullish on the prospects for a boom in ticket sales once theaters are up to Western standards, because of Russia’s long history as a producer and patron of quality films.

They also point to the United States’ experience of cinema popularity even in the depths of the Great Depression.

“The price of a movie ticket is still significant in most household budgets, but it’s one form of entertainment that is affordable for most, at least on occasion,” says Mikhalkov, who just finished filming the biggest-budget film ever made in Russia--the $35-million epic “The Barber of Siberia,” due in theaters this summer.

People will resume regular moviegoing, the director insists, as soon as conditions in their local theaters are comfortable enough to allow them to escape life’s difficulties for a few hours.

Ticket Buyers Need Not Be Wealthy

Both Mikhalkov and Livnev point out that the Russian cinema market during the Soviet era was the second most important economic sector after alcohol and tobacco, and that even filmgoers of modest means are prepared to spend $4 or $5 for a quality movie.

Russia’s protracted transition to a market economy and the shabby state of cinemas have hit ticket sales hard, as figures from the Russian State Committee on Cinema attest. The average Russian bought 14 movie tickets in 1990, when the heavily subsidized theaters offered them for the equivalent of a few pennies. By 1996, that rate plummeted to 0.4 cinema visits.

But when final figures for 1997 are in, analysts expect a noticeable upturn in sales across the country, with most of the growth in the high-end theaters, where ticket prices can run more than twice the nationwide average of 30 rubles, or $5.

“People had been spending their money over the past few years to buy color televisions and VCRs, but now they’ve gotten bored with videos and want to see new movies on the big screen,” says Valery V. Markov, head of the state cinema committee known as GosKino.

Occurring hand in hand with the theater upgrades is a reinvigorated drive to combat piracy--an epidemic that Russian filmmakers now recognize as a danger to their industry’s prospects.

Even before major Hollywood films premiere in Russia--and on occasion, before they are released in the United States--rough-cut versions invariably are clandestinely copied, reproduced and professionally packaged for black-market sale here at far below the cost of purchase or rental from an authorized distributor.

“We try not to show films that are of suspect origin,” says Nina A. Prokopova, director of the Khudozhestvenny cinema, which still gets government subsidies by virtue of its historic role in Russia’s cinematic arts. “It’s obvious to everyone that if a film is available on video at the same time as it’s in the theaters, this is going to cut into our attendance.”

The stately, wintergreen-colored Khudozhestvenny, built in 1909, was the scene of most premieres during the Soviet era and is featured in many pages of literature from Russia’s pre-World War II cultural heyday.

The Khudozhestvenny’s gradual face lift, which began with an interior repainting and the purchase of a new wide screen, has stimulated attendance, with almost a 10% increase in ticket sales last year, Prokopova says.

“Our people consider cinema a higher level of culture than television and will never sate their desire for moviegoing with videos or made-for-TV films,” says Vyacheslav V. Kostikov, deputy director of Gusinsky’s Media-Most. Its NTV-Profit subsidiary is investing in the film industry at both the production and exhibition levels in anticipation of growth in movie patronage.

“Everything being done today in Russia is with the expectation of economic expansion,” says Kostikov, a former Kremlin spokesman. “Today’s incomes are not yet able to sustain the pace of film-going of the former era, but we nevertheless expect dramatic improvement.”