Russian ministry of culture (MinCult) has published amendments to the law on cinema. These amendments one more time confirm the special relation attitude of MinCult to the foreign movies, especially to Hollywood movies. Perhaps because the people prefer Hollywood movies which are demonstrated in Russian cinemas more often than Russian movies?
Actually the draft law targeted to any film, regardless of the country of its production, but the sense and purpose of this draft law is obvious. The proposed law set up the quantity of demonstration for one movie in one cinema during one calendar day. The limit is 35% of all demonstrations in one cinema during one calendar day.
In other words the cinema has to count how many movie demonstrations it can organize during one particular calendar day (the total quantity of demonstrations) and based on this quantity to allocate the available demonstration opportunities (how many times the movie can be shown) among movies. If the cinema has any movies with priorities, like blockbusters, it can allocate not more than 35% of total quantity of demonstrations.
The exception from this rule can be provided to some Russian movies, the Hollywood can wait. MinCult believes it has proposed a standard antitrust measure applicable in different countries including USA. Almost all Russian movies receive status of national movie therefore the proposed law de-facto would apply only to foreign movies, because exception is provided only for national movies.
Despite the wording of the draft law, the Russian minister of culture believes his office did not set up the quote in 35% of demonstration limits for foreign movies in Russia. He doesn’t want to provide a single movie, regardless of its production place, with all demonstration opportunities in Russian cinemas. “We don’t want the situation when all screens in multiplex cinema are occupied by one particular movie”, – he said to Russian news agency TASS.