Director Resigns Over Lenfilm Restructuring

By Galina Stolyarova

Staff Writer

Published: March 5, 2002 (Issue # 750)

Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times Lenfilm’s Sergeyev, shown in a file photo, says he will leave to protest a plan that will deprive the studio of most of its revenues.

A little less than one year after President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on the reorganization of Russia’s 36 state-owned film studios, Viktor Sergeyev — filmmaker and director of Lenfilm — has submitted his letter of resignation in protest against a reform that he feels will bring nothing but ruin.

“I do not want to take part in something that I see as nothing other than destruction,” said Sergeyev, whose films include “The Hangman” (1990), “The Genius” (1991) and “Schizophrenia (1997).

Sergeyev plans to leave Lenfilm — the country’s oldest film studio, which was founded in 1918 — as of May 1.

According to the reorganization scheme developed by the Culture Ministry and approved by Putin last April, Lenfilm will be divided into two independent structures in the course of the next three or four months. The film studio will be turned into a joint stock venture that will eventually be privatized, and a separate state-controlled organization will be set up to manage Lenfilm’s vast film archives.

Sergeyev, though, argues that this arrangement would separate the film studio from its primary source of revenue. According to him, 80 percent of Lenfilm’s income comes from the sale of rights to show films from its collection.

In 1998, the studio signed a deal giving Media-MOST the rights to broadcast its films for 10 years in exchange for $7 million. In all, the lease of broadcast and distribution rights brought the studio 260 million rubles ($8.7 million) over the last four years.

That revenue enabled the studio to purchase 120 million rubles ($4 million) worth of new equipment, raising the studio’s production standards to European levels.

“Lenfilm is a profitable studio,” Sergeyev said. “In February, we earned 1 million rubles [$33,000] in profit.”

He added that Lenfilm currently has five films under production.

Sergeyev further argues that now is not yet the time to privatize Russia’s studios. He points, in particular, to the lack of interested investors.

“The country’s economy has not yet risen to the level where it is possible to invest in sectors other than energy and the like,” he said. “In my opinion, Russia doesn’t have enough investors to provide for the film industry.”

As a result, the proposed new joint stock company will remain state-owned. But without its own source of revenue, it will be completely dependent on meager state subsidies. In 2001, the studio received just 3 million rubles ($100,000) from the state.

Theater and film critic Tatiana Tkach shares Sergeyev’s concern that reorganization will seriously harm Lenfilm and other studios.

“The current scheme allowed state film studios to buy equipment and to finance the production of some films with the money raised through the lease of rights to show films from their collections. The state will ruin this functioning mechanism without offering an adequate replacement,” Tkach said.

“In the contemporary Russian film industry, entertainment already heavily prevails over art. Intellectual cinematography will be killed,” she added.

“Producers will support only the big names. It is already difficult for a beginning actor or director to start a career. With this reorganization, it will become incredibly tough,” Tkach said.

Leonid Romankov, chairperson of the Legislative Assembly’s Commission for Culture and Science, called the Culture Ministry plan an attempt to fill state coffers at the expense of the film studios.

“The film collections of the country’s greatest studios are an impressive source of income,” Romankov said. “Officials realize what the loss of this money means for the studios, but the temptation to manage these handsome sums has won out.”

According to Sergeyev, advertisments sold during the screening of a popular Soviet or Russian film on national television during prime time bring in from $100,000 to $150,000.

The controversial reform was first conceived in 1998, the brainchild of Culture Minister Mikhail Shvydkoi — who was then the head of the VGTRK state-owned broadcast company — and Press Minister Mikhail Lesin, who was then the head of Video International, a private company that enjoys virtual monopoly control over national television advertising.

Sergeyev has been unable to meet with Putin to explain his position.

“I am convinced that our president had been misinformed or under-informed by his advisers when he signed the decree,” Sergeyev said, adding that he is pessimistic that the order can be changed.

“The president has been lax in reacting to the situation so far, and he is not the kind of person who would ever cancel his own decree,” Sergeyev said. “This tells me that the reorganization can’t be stopped. However, I did have a list of proposals for the president that would prevent the ruin of the studio, while not meaning the cancellation of the decree. I can’t elaborate because the president hasn’t seen the proposals. They didn’t reach him.”

Although pessimistic about Lenfilm’s future, Sergeyev is looking forward to a return to filmmaking.

“The five years I’ve spent in this office have indeed eaten into my career as a director,” he said. “I am hoping to fight back as a professional filmmaker.”