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The first films seen in the Russia Empire were via the Lumière Brothers , in Moscow and St. Petersburg in May 1896. In the same month, the first film was shot in Russia, by Lumière cameraman Camille Cerf , a record of the coronation of Nicholas II at the Kremlin in Moscow . Film in Russia became a staple of fairs or rented auditoriums. After the Lumières came representatives from Pathé and Gaumont to open offices, after the turn of the century, to make motion pictures on location for Russian audiences. Theatres were already built, and film renting Distributors had already replaced direct sales to Exhibitor s, when, in 1908, Aleksandr Drankov produced the first Russian narrative film, Stenka Razin , based on events told in a popular folk song and directed by Vladimir Romashkov . Ladislas Starevich made the first Russian animated film (and the first Stop Motion puppet film with a story) in 1910 - ''Lucanus Cervus''. He continued making animated films (some of which can now be bought on DVD) until his Emigration to France following the 1917 October Revolution . He was decorated by the Tsar for his work in 1911 . Competition from French, American, German, Danish, British and Italian companies, distributing their country's wares to the eager Russians, developed, but the indigenous industry made such strides over the next five years that 129 fully Russian films - even if many of them were comparatively short - were produced in 1918 alone. In 1912, the to the world with its " Ukhod Velikovo Startsa " ("Departure of the Grand Old Man"), a Biography Film about Lev Tolstoy . Tsar Nicholas himself made some Home Movies and appointed an official Court Cinematographer, although he is purported to have written in 1913 that film was "an empty matter...even something harmful...silliness...we should not attribute any significance to such trifles". Tsar Nicholas gave some special assistance to the makers of "The Defence of Sevastopol" and a few similar films, but the industry was not nationalized nor governmentally subsidized or otherwise controlled. There were also only a few rules of censorship on a national level - such as not making the Tsars characters in a dramatized film - but the filmmakers were largely free to produce for the mass audience; local officials might be more stringent in censoring or banning films. Detective Film s were popular, and various forms of Melodrama . as Father Sergius in Yakov Protazanov 's 1917 film.]] The arrival of . Also, the Skobolev Committee was established by the government to oversee the making of Newsreel and Propaganda Film s. And then came the Russian Revolution, on top of the ongoing international War. With audiences demoralized by the latter and turning against the Tsar, film producers began turning out, after the February Revolution, a number of films with anti-Tsarist themes. These, along with the usual retinue of detective films and melodramas, filled theaters when the streets were not filled with revolutionaries. But in the end, as the insurgent Red Army took the country from the post-Romanov Provisional Government by force, the destruction of the infrastructure in the major cities, the failing war-drained economy, the takeover of rural cinemas by local soviets, and the aversion of some in the film industry to Communism , the Russian film industry per se had effectively died by the time Lenin on November 8, 1917 proclaimed a new country, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic . Ironically, the last significant Russian film completed, in 1917, " Otets Sergii " ("Father Sergius") would become the first new film release a year later, in the new country of the Soviets. The R.S.F.S.R. (1917-1991) ''See:'' Cinema Of The Soviet Union The Russian Federation (1991-present) |
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