Gosfilmofond of Russia

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Gosfilmofond of Russia

Archive type State Film Archive
place 142050 Domodedovo
near Moscow
founding 1948: Gosfilmofond of the USSR
1991: Gosfilmofond of Russia
Age of the archive material 20./21. century
carrier Russian Federation
Website www.aha.ru/~filmfond

http://www.gosfilmofond.ru/

Gosfilmofond Russia ( Russian Госфильмофонд России, Gosfilmofond Rossii) is the "State Film Archive of Russia ". The film archive serves to preserve, preserve, disseminate and research the cultural film heritage . With around 65,000 films, Gosfilmofond is one of the world's largest film collections. The collection of the Russian State Film Archive includes feature films and documentaries as well as uncut historical film material, specialist literature, scripts, censorship cards, film posters, film reviews and hundreds of thousands of film photos.

Every year Gosfilmofond organizes the "Belyje Stolby Festival", which specializes in retrospectives. The film archive is a member of the Fédération Internationale des Archives du Film (FIAF) and cooperates with other international film archives and film festivals. It is located on an area of ​​170 hectares in Belyje Stolby, a settlement incorporated into the city of Domodedovo in the south of Moscow Oblast .

history

A forerunner of Gosfilmofond was the "Central State Archive of the USSR for Film and Photo Documents" founded in Moscow in 1926 (today located in Krasnogorsk as the "Russian State Archive for Film and Photo Documents" ). On behalf of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , a new institution for the archiving of Soviet films was set up in the Belyje Stolby settlement in Moscow Oblast in 1936/37. Since the late 1930s, the film archive has received copies of every film produced in the Soviet Union, including some film versions that deviated from the official theatrical versions. The film archive was temporarily relocated during the Second World War . After the end of the World War, the film archive received two truckloads of German and international films from the holdings of the former Reich Film Archive as Soviet spoils of war . After their invasion of Berlin in April 1945, the Soviet troops initially confiscated all of the film material in the Reichsfilmarchiv. The exact extent and time of the transport of the looted art to the Soviet Union are unknown.

In October 1948, the facility was converted and by ministerial decree was given the name Gosfilmofond of the USSR, State Archive for Feature Films. In 1957 Gosfilmofond joined the Fédération Internationale des Archives du Film . Membership enabled Gosfilmofond to have a regular exchange with the film archives of other member states of the FIFG. Between 1961 and 1979 Gosfilmofond published a five-volume annotated catalog of all Soviet feature films from 1918 to 1966, which was later continued for the following decades. In March 1966, Gosfilmofond opened the archive film theater “Illusion” on Kotelnitscheskaja-Ufer in Moscow , which offers not only films from its own collections but also premieres of international films.

Gosfilmofond remained institutionally intact after the collapse of the Soviet Union , but has since limited its archival mandate to Russian films and is no longer responsible for productions from other former Soviet republics. In 1993, President Boris Yeltsin accepted Gosfilmofond - meanwhile under the new name "Gosfilmofond Russia" - into the group of state collections dedicated to the "preservation of the cultural heritage of the peoples of the Russian Federation".

Since 1997, Gosfilmofond has organized the “Belyje Stolby Festival”, which specializes in retrospectives, every January. At the festival, important films are shown again and restored and reconstructed versions of rare films are shown. Occasionally, late film premieres of works that were not shown in the cinemas for political reasons or new films are shown that are based extensively on archival material and for which Gosfilmofond acted as co-producer. In 1998 Gosfilmofond became a member of the Association des Cinémathèques Européennes . In 2007 a new digital film archive was set up in Belyje Stolby.

The Gosfilmofond manages a collection of more than 65,000 film titles (including over 800,000 rolls of film with a playing time of more than 60,000 hours). International films make up around two thirds of the portfolio, which is growing by around 1,000 films annually. The film archive employs over five hundred people. In particular, the leading film archivist Vladimir Dmitriew until his death in 2013, as well as the scientific curator Petr Bagrov as his successor, enjoyed a high reputation in specialist circles. Bagrov left the Gosfilmofond in November 2017 because of a conflict with the director.

In the Novaya Gazeta in December 2017, various people involved expressed fears about the further decline in the scientific quality of the film archive if Nikolai Borodachev and his circle were to remain in charge. Borodachev was director of the Gosfilmofond from November 2001 to December 2017. He was eventually fired after a number of filmmakers wrote an open letter to then Prime Minister of Russia Dmitry Medvedev. “ Lately, the leadership of the Gosfilmofond has been constantly and justifiably criticized in public for the lack of a constructive dialogue with the film scholars and filmmakers, the loss of leading academic specialists, the financing of expensive projects that are not related to the fulfillment of the primary tasks of the Gosfilmofond, as well as the categorical rejection of newer technologies. [...] We believe that the moment of truth has come. In relation to this, we would like to suggest to you that you consider the possibility of appointing a new head of the Gosfilmofond Russia who has the necessary professional skills for an upcoming restart of the Golfilmofond. "

In January 2018, Vjacheslav Tel'nov was appointed as the new director. His deputy Sergej Alekseev took over the management in November 2018. During this time, the Gosfilmofond was modernized and restructured, which was welcomed by the professional world. In February 2019, without consultation with the Gosfilmofond, an order from the Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky appointed his deputy Nikolaj Malakov - after he had retired - as the new director of the Gosfilmofond. As a result, the entire management of the Gosfilmofond was changed, which was sharply criticized in the professional world.

literature

  • Dmitriev, Vladimir Y .: Gosfilmofond: the film archive of the Russian Federation , in: Museum International , Volume 46, No. 4, 1994, pp. 16-20.
  • The film in the Soviet Union Republics . Compiled by the All Union Research Institute for Cinematography at Goskino of the USSR. Municipal cinema, Frankfurt am Main 1982.
  • MAP-TV (Ed.): Film and Television Collections in Europe. The MAP-TV Guide . Chapman & Hall, London 1995.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Slavko Nowytski: The USSR's Gosfilmofond in: CTVD: Cinema TV Digest. A quarterly review of the serious, foreign-language cinema-tv-press. No. 5. Hampton Books, Hampton Bays NY 1967, p. 4f., Here p. 5
  2. ↑ MAP-TV (Ed.): Film and Television Collections in Europe. The MAP-TV Guide . Chapman & Hall, London 1995, p. 436
  3. ^ Volker Baer : Film as looted art. Politics still occupy the Reichsfilmarchiv , in: film-dienst , issue 16, 1995, online at: http://www.defa.de/cms/16/1995
  4. ↑ a b c MAP-TV (Ed.): Film and Television Collections in Europe . Chapman & Hall, London 1995, p. 436
  5. ↑ Sasha Sulim, Interview with Petr Bagrov: The Chief Curator Petr Bagrov on his dismissal and the future of the cinema archive. Colta.ru, December 18, 2017, accessed May 4, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Larisa Maljukova: How Depardieu defeated science. Strong businessmen within the Gosfilmofond leadership can send a unique film archive to the rubbish dump of history , Novaya Gazeta, December 16, 2017
  7. ↑ Open letter from the filmmakers of Russia to Dmitri Medvedev. Novaja gazeta, December 29, 2017, accessed May 24, 2020 .
  8. ↑ Larisa Maljukova: Stand still! The “Belyje stolby” festival begins with a dismissal. For the last few years the country's most important film archive has been a zone of heightened turbulence. Novaya gazeta, February 28, 2019, accessed May 24, 2020 .