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EASTWEEK
Weekly analytical newsletter on Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Caucasus and Central Asia (also available in Polish as Tydzień na Wschodzie)

Contents

No. 21(171) | 2009-06-03
Also available in PDF

Analyses

  • Opel to be owned by Russians?

    The German government announced on 30 May that a framework agreement had been signed concerning the takeover of a majority stake (55%) in the German car company Opel by a consortium led by the Russian state-owned bank Sberbank. It has to be emphasised that the agreement is still preliminary and it has not yet been decided "if and in what form" it will be implemented.

  • A new election in Moldova

    On 3 June, the Moldovan opposition succeeded in blocking the election of the new president, and thus forced the outgoing president Vladimir Voronin (the leader of the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova, PCRM, which has ruled the country since 2001) to disband the parliament and announce new elections (which may take place as early as mid-August).

    The election will be of fundamental importance for the future of Moldova. For this reason it will attract the attention of external players, especially Russia and Romania.

Events

 

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Russian Federation: Vladimir Putin to chair Russian cinema council
EASTWEEK

2009-06-03

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On 29 May the Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin approved the composition of the Government Council for the Development of Russian Cinema. The council is made up of popular politicians, bankers and film directors with close links to the authorities; Putin himself will be the council chairman. The personal involvement of the Prime Minister and the council's objective of promoting "the development of patriotic cinema" show that the objective of the Russian authorities is to make cinema a propaganda tool, like the mass media currently are.

The council was established by PM Putin's directive of 24 December 2008, andincludes politicians (deputy chief of the Presidential Administration Vladislav Surkov, deputy PM Alexander Zhukov), bankers (Vneshekonombank chief Vladimir Dmitriev), heads of the state-owned television channels, and directors with good relations with the authorities (Nikita Mikhalkov, Vladimir Khotinenko). The council's mission includes co-ordinating state procurement of patriotic movies, supporting the distribution of Russian films at home and abroad, and developing a package of measures to protect the domestic movie market. Starting from 2010, the government will allocate 4.3 billion roubles (around US$140 million) a year to these purposes.

Russia's film industry has been used for many years to promote a vision of history consistent with the government's political interests. This is true both of the most recent history (one example being Olympus inferno, a film about last year's war in Georgia), and that of centuries ago (another example is 1612, representing the expulsion of 'Polish interventionists' from the Kremlin). The government cinema council formalises the state's influence in this sphere, and will act as another body of political propaganda, like the presidential commission to combat attempts at falsifying history to the detriment of Russia, appointed in May. <JR>

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