Window to Europe film festival to open in Vyborg Tue

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VYBORG, Leningrad Region, August 11 (Itar-Tass) -- The 17th Russian
film festival Window to Europe is opening in Vyborg on Tuesday. This town
in the Leningrad Region on the border with Finland will host six days of
Russian filmmakers' meetings with audiences, premier showings and
discussions.
"On the billboards there are only home releases. The festival's task
is to identify and analyze mainstream trends in modern cinema art and the
focal points of filmmakers' creative efforts. Hence the forum's sub-title
- Russian Cinema - a Forecast for Tomorrow," the festival's president,
Armen Medvedev, told Itar-Tass in an interview.
As usual, on schedule there are quite a few premier showings and debut
works by beginners and releases by well-established celebrities.
On the main contest list of feature films there are works by the
leading Russian directors - I Do Believe, by Lidiya Bobrova, Double Loss,
by Valery Donskoy, and Soundtrack of Passion, by Nikolai Lebedev, as well
as the largely experimental title from Andrei Khrzhanovsky One and a Half
Rooms or a Sentimental Journey Back to Home Sweet Home.
In all, forty titles will be shown in the three contests of feature
films, documentaries and animated cartoons.
The opening ceremony at the town's best cinema hall Vyborg-Palace will
be followed by the premier showing of Vladimir Khotinenko's
Transfiguration.
The organizers of the film festival invariably follow the original
tradition of arranging for a contest in which the audiences are the
judges. Taking part in the contest, alongside the films on the official
program, are also several winners of awards at other festivals. After each
showing the spectators and participants will be asked to fill in question
forms and the winner will be named on the basis of popularity ratings.
The festival's another tradition is the presentation of incomplete
projects. This time Vladimir Motyl will let audiences see his unfinished
film called Scarlet-Colored Snowfall. He will also celebrate the 40th
anniversary of one of his best works, The White Sun of the Desert. There
will be special ceremonies on the occasion of other jubilee dates in the
history of the national film industry, such as the 25th anniversary of
Vladimir Abdrashitov's Parade of Planets.


.Bronze Soldier monument defiled in Estonia.


TALLINN, August 11 (Itar-Tass) -- The Bronze Soldier monument, erected
in the Estonian capital Tallinn decades ago to honor the Soviet Army for
liberating Estonia from Nazi occupation during World War II, was defiled
on Monday evening. Unknown vandals painted pro-Nazi and anti-Communist and
anti-Semiotic graffiti on the wall behind the monument, says the Internet
portal of Estonia's Russian community.
As is seen on the pictures placed on the website, the vandals wrote
the Nazi greeting 'Heil Hitler' and painted the emblem and swastika signs
and also five-point and six-point stars - both crisscrossed.
The act of vandalism occurred at Tallinn's military cemetery, where
the monument was moved back in April 2007 from the city's center at the
decision of the Estonian authorities. The police then cracked down on
protest demonstrations by the Russian-speaking population against the
monument's removal.
Another monument to the Soviet soldiers, the one in Kehra, was defiled
in May 2009. The vandals dug out the gravestone and overturned the stone
vases for flowers.


.Ukrainians distrust all bodies of power - poll.


KIEV, August 11 (Itar-Tass) -- The Ukrainians' level of trust towards
President Viktor Yushchenko has fallen to 6.3 percent. Only this tiny
faction of Ukrainian society has full confidence in the head of state, as
follows from the results of an opinion poll published by the Razumkov
Center of Economic and Political Studies on Monday.
It is quite significant that as many - 6.3 percent - trust the Yulia
Timoshenko Cabinet. Still less, 2.8 percent, trust the national
parliament. However, Ukrainians feel the highest degree of distrust
towards commercial banks. Only 2.1 percent offered favorable comments. As
the opinion poll has indicated, the Ukrainians are unhappy about the
performance of practically all institutions of state power. Nine percent
are satisfied about how the police do their job, four percent trust courts
and 6.6 percent, the prosecutors' offices.
In this context of universal disillusionment the Razumkov pollster
arrived at the conclusion that if the presidential election were due next
Sunday, the leader of the Party of Regions, Viktor Yanukovich, would
collect 22 percent of the votes, Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko, 13
percent, and the leader of the Front for Change, former parliamentary
speaker Arseny Yatsenyuk, 11 percent.
And in the parliamentary elections 23 percent would vote for the party
of regions, 12.8 percent for the Yulia Timoshenko Bloc, 9.7 percent for
the Front for Change, and 5.6 percent for the Communist Party. The other
parties that would have chances to enter parliament are the Vladimir
Litvin Bloc (4.1 percent), Viktor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine (3.3 percent),
as well as the ultra-nationalist association Liberty (3 percent).
The opinion poll was conducted on July 20-28. The pollster questioned
2,006 men and women of age in all of the country's regions. The
statistical error margin is 2.6 percent.

-0-str