RWS on St. Petersburg International Economic Forum

Andrei Smirnov, CEO of Sistema Mass Media and Russian World Studios (RWS) board member, film director and producer Timur Bekmambetov, producer Sergei Selyanov, actress Ingeborga Dapkunaite and Andy Bird, Chairman of Walt Disney International, took part in the meeting. They discussed current domestic and international film industry issues amid the financial crisis.

While making his speech at the roundtable, Andrei Smirnov said that during the credit crunch a positive trend emerged for cinematography which was being gradually cleared from those who would have liked to get money but at the same time produce nothing.

According to Mr. Smirnov, Soviet government would spend over 100 million rubles annually on cinema, a so-called “the politics of spare change”. Now that there is no more spare money investors will get a better understanding of why they need to finance movie production. It is obvious that there is a trend shift taking place when independent investors along with the government are becoming more careful about investing their money.

Andrei Smirnov pointed out that one of the main problems of the Russian film industry is the absence of an internationally widespread industrial approach to cinema that Russia is going to adopt in the near future. This will help to change the existing perception of cinematography as some amorphous industry where one has an opportunity to “scratch a creative itch”, usually spending state funds. As a result just few films made it to its audience and were interesting to it. But right now there is a ground for creating content that the society truly needs.

St. Petersburg International Economic Forum devoted to the current issues of international development was held June 4-6, 2009. The global economic crisis has demonstrated a need to create non-standard approaches and to make nontrivial team decisions. Forum participants discussed new approaches towards understanding the future of international financial institutions, banking sector outlook, effectiveness of the measures being taken by governments, international film industry and other important issues.  

Particular attention was devoted to the role of Russia in dealing with those issues. Representatives of international political and business elite, leading economists and experts attended the forum.