Photo sessions and film buffets: Moscow Cinema Festival
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The sites of the Moscow Cinema Festival, which will take place on 9−18 September, will feature dome cinemas, screens and projectors, filming pavilions and a photographing mirror. Art objects from beloved films will be installed across the city: the Mikhail Svetlov cruise ship from The Diamond Arm, the Sevryuga steamship from Volga-Volga, and the New Year fir tree from The Carnival Night. City residents will be able not only to see the familiar stage sets and scenes from their favourite films but also to taste dishes from a special cinema menu: sturgeon shashlik, pickled apples, donuts, muffins, pancakes and pies with various fillings. The 33 themed venues across Moscow will be devoted to cult films, most of which take place in the capital.
During the festival visitors will be able to watch all their favourite movies. Cinemas will be set up at some venues while elsewhere screens will be installed right in shopping and entertainment huts.
Dance the mazurka and fight the Battle of Austerlitz
The site on Tverskaya Square is dedicated to Sergei Bondarchuk’s film War and Peace. The atmosphere of the early 19th century will be recreated here. For greater historical authenticity, genuine antique furniture, household items and period costumes will be used in the design of the site and the pavilions.
Visitors will be able to drink in the atmosphere of the Napoleonic wars era, participate in interactive educational programmes (military service, ballroom dancing, needlework, etiquette), take pictures on sets with period decorations, taste famous Russian and French dishes, and buy books and antiquities: crockery, candlesticks, vintage albums, postcards, watches and coins.
The War pavilion will recreate a Russian army officer’s quarters: a card-table, writing desk, sofa, potted palm and other indispensable attributes of an officer’s life in the early 19th century. Visitors will be able to get a sense of the lifestyle and habits of Russian army servicemen of the Napoleonic wars era, try on a busby and take a photo to remember the event.
The Peace pavilion will feature a living room/music salon with live piano music, singing and elements of "living pictures" (a popular form of home entertainment at the time).
A section of the pavilion will be set aside for a dressing room and will be dedicated to the clothing of the early 19th century. In addition, miscellaneous items like irons, curlers, hook fasteners and other appliances will be displayed.
On the square behind the Yury Dolgoruky monument, Kutuzov’s and Napoleon’s HQ and an army field camp will be deployed. On City Day, military parades and 1812 battles will be reconstructed here.
The area around the fountain will be reserved for ballroom dancing, with professional instructors teaching all who are interested to dance the mazurka and the polonaise. Professional make-up and costume artists will help visitors dress up for a ball.
See a play about the life of aborigines and learn to tie a nautical knot
Manezh Square will host the set of the film Volga-Volga, including a replica of Sevryuga steamship, where the main events unfolded in the film. Animation huts will offer everyone who is interested an opportunity to design a ship, paint wooden boat models, learn to navigate a ship, tie nautical knots and draw route maps.
Visitors will also see artifacts from their favourite films. Pushkinskaya Square will be the location of the Mikhail Svetlov cruise ship, the “taxi to Dubrovka” and “Mosfilm’s favourite horse” from Leonid Gaidai’s film The Diamond Arm. Every day a show called Unlucky Island will be staged – an interactive play about the life of unlucky aborigines who are always getting in trouble, based on the popular eponymous song from the film. Visitors to the site will also be able to watch films in a dome cinema. Every night there will be a concert where popular Soviet melodies, film songs and jazz improvisations will be played.
Food vendors will offer fish and meat pies, grilled fish and vegetables, dumplings with broth and sour cream, grilled quail, and mashed potatoes with barbecue sausage.
Shoot a short film and make a clapperboard
On Novy Arbat, which has become the go-to venue for city festivals after an upgrade, the atmosphere of the film Moscow, I Love you will be recreated. There will be a photographing mirror and a chromakey pavilion where visitors will be able to make short films about themselves from a preselected set. The 360 Degrees pavilion will also offer people the chance to tap into their creative side. Festival participants will be able to shoot their own film together with a professional operator, using modern panoramic video recording technology. There will also be a stunt site, where stunt actors will perform.
On Rozhdestvenka Street, the set of the film Big School-Break, a giant counting frame, a blackboard with chalk and a big school bell will be installed. Creative workshops will be held according to a fixed schedule. Visitors will be taught how to make a pencil case in the form of a clapperboard, decorate a film notepad and design trendy prints on t-shirts and school bags.
Visitors will be offered a choice of jam and meat dumplings, meat pies and pancakes, stewed vegetables, shashlik on skewers and grilled spareribs.
Edit a film scene and do a retro photo session
At the set of the film We Are from a Jazz Band near the Karl Marx monument (Revolyutsii Square), a computer cinema academy will be located, where everyone who is interested will be able to recreate and edit a scene from the film. There will also be a cinema hall where visitors will be able to see various films and listen to lectures by industry experts.
Stoleshnikov Pereulok will be dedicated to Nikita Mikhalkov’s film A Slave of Love. There will be a makeup room and a retro photo studio, where visitors will be able to participate in a photo session posing as film characters. They will be assisted by professional photographers and makeup artists. A cinematograph will be set up at the site to screen silent films to piano accompaniment.
Visitors will be offered a choice of shashlik on skewers, grilled spareribs and sweet dishes.
Make a dish from a film and learn the ABC’s of professional makeup
In the Novopushkinsky Garden, a New Year fir tree, a display window with Christmas decorations from the 1950s and the 1960s and a four-metre clock reading five minutes to midnight will be installed. Festival guests will immerse themselves in The Carnival Night where they will dance together with lookalikes of Lenochka Krylova, Arlekin and other characters. There will be a cooking workshop where everyone who is interested will be taught to make dishes from films.
In Kamergersky Pereulok, the venue will be dedicated to Moscow, My Love, a film about a love affair between a Japanese ballerina and a Moscow-based sculptor. At interactive lectures, visitors will learn how the images of film characters are created, how makeup artists and stylists work, and will attend professional makeup workshops.
A special film menu will feature miso soup, seafood kebabs on skewers, soybean and vegetable sprout salads and doughnuts.
Films in administrative areas
In addition to downtown venues, there will be 10 themed sites in administrative areas. The sets of a number of films will be recreated there: Old Man Khottabych (Northern Administrative Area), Operation Y and Shurik’s Other Adventures (Eastern Administrative Area), Moscow-Cassiopeia (the Troitsky and Novomoskovsky administrative areas), Carnival (Southern Administrative Area) and Beware of the Car (Southeastern Southern Administrative Area), among others. Visitors will see theatrical shows based on film storylines, the exhibitions of costumes and props, and dishes based on film recipes. Shopping booths will offer antique and vintage goods reflecting each film period.
Moscow Cinema Festival and City Day
The Moscow Cinema Festival will take place on 9−18 September as part of the Year of Russian Cinema. On City Day, which will be celebrated on 10 and 11 September, a number of themed sites, dedicated to the films Ivan Vasilyevich Changes Profession, They Met in Moscow, War and Peace, Circus, The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed, Walking the Streets of Moscow, Pokrovsky Gate, Guest from the Future and Mod Squad, will be moved to Tverskaya Street. After the celebration they will return to Moscow Cinema Festival sites.
The festival will open during the autumn cycle of city street events, Moscow Seasons.