Despite crisis Moscow film festival is ambitious as usual.

MOSCOW, June 20 (By Itar-Tass World Service writer Lyudmila
Alexandrova) -- The Moscow International Film Festival that opened on
Friday, June 19 is a jubilee event. Half a century lies between today's
31st assembly of world film-makers, and the first one, arranged for in
1959 with the aim to demonstrate to the whole world what was then called
"the advantages of the Socialist way of life."

This Moscow film festival is no less ambitious, although the Socialist
way of life is no more and a very capitalist world crisis is the reality
of the day. The Moscow film festival regards itself as a "grown-up" and it
is determined to safeguard its place on the world market of get-togethers
for filmmakers.
On the festival's program there are about 220 titles from around the
world, but most foreign guests go to Moscow mostly to see what is new in
the Russian film industry, cinema critic Andrei Plakhov told the daily
Kommersant. In this sense the Moscow Film Festival is in no way different
from Sochi's Cinetaurus, which has drawn quite a few foreign experts and
film selectioners.
Oddly enough, today's situation in the world is a good chance for the
Moscow film festival, says the Grand Jury's chairman, Russian film
director Pavel Lungin (author of Taxi Blues, Luna Park, The Wedding, The
Oligarch and The Tsar).
"The world festival movement is degrading, we all can see that pretty
well. Of the grand film festivals, I believe, only the one in Cannes has
survived. The Venice festival is drying up and the Berlin one went boring
long ago. Instead, there have emerged many regional events. And Moscow's
state budget-backed wish to stay in the company of the world cinema
centers will be certainly taken note of and appreciated."
Judging by the current festival's program the organizers have put the
stake on the diversity of genres and a vast geography - participating in
the grand contest are 16 titles from 14 countries, including Iran, Mexico,
South Korea, East European countries, and also Georgia and Ukraine.
In the contest program Russia is represented by three parable-style
works. The Miracle, by Alexander Proshkin, Pete on the Way to the Heavenly
Kingdom, by Nikolai Dostal, and Ward Number 6, by Karen Shakhnazarov, who
transplanted the plot of Anton Chekhov's short story into the modern
reality.
From June 20 through June 28 a total of 24 film programs will be
demonstrated.
Apart from the winners in the Grand Contest the jury will name the
best in the contest of experimental productions called Prospects - Andrei
Eshpai's The Event (a screen version of Vladimir Nabokov's same-name
play), The First Squad - an animated cartoon by Japan's Yoshiharu Oshina
(a World War II story featuring the Red Army), the Netherlands' Last
Conversation (shot in a single take with 25 cameras), the gloomy thriller
the Coma, by Austria's Ludwig Woest and others.
The high-profile participants in and award winners at the Cannes film
festival will be presented in the permanent program of the best arthouse
titles "8 _ Films".
Moscow audiences will be able to taste the "provocateurship" of the
notorious abuser of the Canon - both written and unwritten - Lars von
Trier (The Antichrist came under fire in the Cannes and was even received
the anti-award from the ecumenical panel of judges), Michael Haneke's
White Ribbon (the holder of the Golden Palm) and two Cannes prize-winners
A Prophet, by Jacques Audiard, and Tatarak (Sweet Rush), by the world
cinema classic Andrzei Wajda.
The daily Noviye Izvestia believes it is worth mentioning the
retrospective showing of Georgian films - from The Oath to The Repentance
and a program of modern Bulgarian cinema, which is steady on the ascent
again.
The program of documentaries called Free Thought will be one of the
major attractions at the festival. Contributors from many countries around
the world will narrate their own stories the authors of feature films have
kept quiet about.
According to experts, this is going to be one of the best programs at
the festival, featuring Encounters at the End of the World, by Werner
Herzog, a glimpse of what every-day life is like at an Arctic station, US
films about Hunter Thompson and Michael Tyson, and a French documentary
about Prokofiev.
Lastly, says the daily Gazeta, there will be the long-expected
continuation of last year's program Socialist Avantgardism. The first
declared titles are the comic opera Save the Drowning Person, by Pavel
Arsenov, and Alexander Ivanov's Optimistic drama The Original Russians -
about a commune in Altai. Both are 1967 releases.
Despite the crisis, says the daily Trud, this year the number of films
and the list of star guests makes one quite optimistic. Moscow will
welcome Hanna Schygulla, Ken Louche, Josian Balasco, Michael Mann, Irene
Jacobe, and Adrien Brody.