Short Film: Genre Originality of Debuts
The articles analyses contemporary Russian short-length films. In the “Short Film and Cinematic Process”section, the shorts are compared to full-length films, revealing such basic typological features of shorts as greater freedom in choosing a subject, broad opportunities for experiments with the specific genre characteristics and with the selection of the means of expression, a shorter distance between the film and the viewer due to digital technologies and the availability of online movie platforms. In the section “Russian Short Films in the Context of World Trends”, the authors of the article compare Russian short films of recent years and their foreign counterparts and come to the conclusion that domestic films are chaster, their authors do not raise radical feminist issues, do not aim to shock the viewer by provocative social dramas. The section “Russian Short-length films: Quality Criteria”, substantiates the idea about a specific contribution of the best term and graduation works of students and recent graduates of the All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography named after S. Gerasimov to the modern achievements of domestic shorts. In the sections “Audience hits: the formula for success”, “Gender and family problems in Russian short-length films”, “Crime comedy as a critical aspect of the perception of reality” the authors undertake a case study of short films and outline the following problematic areas addressed by modern Russian short film directors: growing up and choosing a life path, gender problems, anthropology of family and parenthood, interrogative rhetoric and new sentimentality, the search for national identity, critical and ironic aspects of the perception of reality. The article has a sufficient degree of relevance and scientific novelty, since modern Russian short films have not been the subject of special research until now.