World War 2 Movies Russian

[Celedonio Miranda]

Ukraine's Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Wednesday said the war in the city of Donbas is as bad as those people might have seen in movies on the second world war and also blamed Russia's blocking of Ukrainian foodgrain shipments for the food crisis being faced by the entire world.

According to him, it is a matter of food security for the entire world and any safe passage would first require de-mining of the harbours which were mined by Russia itself. He also said there is no guarantee that once the safe passage is created, Russia would not violate the conditions of the passage.

''Trust is a big issue with Russia. There are many security issues associated with it, but we are ready to consider all proposals as we do not want in anyway to be responsible for the food crisis for the entire world. But, the question remains that should we trust Russia,'' Kuleba said.

Asked whether he believes that the war can end through diplomacy, he said all wars end through diplomacy but the intentions of Russia raise the questions when they have launched such a devastating offensive in the city of Donbas.

On financial support from other countries, he said what is being talked about is micro financial assistance and not plain financing and he is not interested in simply taking away money of taxpayers in friendly countries.

"Even before I graduated from school, I wanted to work in intelligence," Putin writes in his autobiography, First Person. "Books and spy movies like The Sword and the Shield took hold of my imagination."

The Sword and the Shield is set in 1940 with Nazi Germany at the height of its military power. The Germans have captured most of Europe and are eyeing the Soviet Union. The Soviet military command arranges for its spies to infiltrate the ranks of the German military and the SS. Soviet spy Alexander Belov (Lyubshin) travels from Soviet-held Latvia to Nazi Germany under an assumed name. His goal is to use his fluent German to manipulate others and ascend the ladder of the Abwehr, the German military-intelligence service for the Reichswehr and the Wehrmacht, and later the SD, the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party.

Putin also become fluent in German and served as a KGB officer in East Berlin in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell, a pivotal event in world history that figuratively marked the fall of the Iron Curtain and communism in Central and Eastern Europe.

Russia is a land that has been blessed with a lot of creative talent across the board. With writers such as Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Anton Chekhov, the Russian population is raised on a creative diet of literary greats. This in turn reflected throughout the world, as Russia is responsible for some of the best films and filmmakers the world has ever seen. Here are some of the best Russian movies of all time, ranked.

Directed by one of the modern greats of Russian cinema, Andrey Zvyaginstev, Loveless tells the tale of a couple whose son goes missing during their vicious divorce. The couple, Zhenya and Boris, have mentally moved on with new partners and are waiting to turn the page on their relationship, when their 12-year-old son Alyosha disappears after witnessing one of their ferocious fights, forcing the couple to turn a blind eye to their differences and unitedly look for their son.

Based on the 1964 novel of the same name, Hard to Be a God is a science fiction film directed by Aleksei German and follows a group of scientists that are sent on a recruitment mission to a planet called Arkanar. The mission of the scientists is simple: they are not to violently interfere with life in Arkanar, which is going through its medieval phase, while identifying and recruiting their best minds. Trouble stirs when one of the scientists tries to save the locals from punishment, thereby playing God and breaking the rules of the mission.

One of the best war films of all time. Come and See tells the tale of a young boy named Florya whose teenage bravado propels him to join a group of resistance fighters, much to his mother's annoyance, as the Germans surround his village in the Soviet Union. As the curtain of war descends on young Florya, his childlike innocence is swapped with the harsh brutalities of war.

Today's session of the Government Council for the Advancement of the National Film Industry is taking place in a venue of special significance to every cinema lover. The Gosfilmofond state film archive is the world's largest motion picture conservation centre. It holds more than 60,000 movies, as its director has just now told us, and this collection reflects the history of Russian as well as world cinema.

Each new generation creates its own cinema, bringing its own heroes to the silver screen. And it's largely on the basis of contemporary movies that an image of our time will be formed (by future generations).

We all want contemporary Russian cinema to become part of the national artistic heritage as well as the world's. Members of the professional community present here today could make this happen if provided with adequate government support. Creating conditions for the advancement of the film industry and the fulfillment of our nation's creative potential is one of the government's responsibilities.

A year ago, we discussed in detail how things stood at the time with regard to the government's support of the film industry. We agreed that the plans then in place were out of touch with reality and that Russian cinema badly needed some new, relevant modes of interaction with the state.

The establishment of the Federal Fund for Social and Economic Support of the National Film Industry was one of the first important steps toward reforming this system. At our council's initiative, the Fund was given the right to produce and promote Russian feature films as well as to provide assistance for promising film studios, reputed for the consistently high quality of their output.

The Fund provides financial support for successful studios that lead in box-office proceeds and professional awards and are, consequently, in a position to recoup production costs. It also pays bonuses for pictures that have drawn an audience of above 1 million and contribute to the creation of socially significant films, notably with patriotic and educational content oriented toward young audiences.

Representatives of several generations of film makers are taking part in our meeting today, including young talent. Without the participation of aspiring filmmakers, our conversation about the future of Russian cinema would be incomplete, I think.

Alexander Avdeyev: Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed members of the Governmental Council! The introduction of a new mechanism of government support for film production was, indeed, the event of the year in movie industry management. And Mr Putin described it as such.

The film community continues to be embroiled in heated debates over the criteria for selecting the eight leading companies. Many professionals are skeptical about the prospect of having to apply for funding with a private company rather than the state.

Let me make it clear once again that the film community is concerned, first, by the fact that to get funding for a new film, they will now have to to apply for funding with a private company and to submit their scripts to a private company. And, second, they have certain doubts over the criteria set for selecting the eight companies in charge of distributing the money.

Let me now pass on to another problem: the uneven playing field for tax-payers. Much tougher tax regulations apply to the allocations we make toward debut and art-house films than to the money distributed via the Fund.

Alexander Avdeyev: The money at stake here, Mr Putin, is a 20% tax on the sum. That is a lot of money. I would also like to emphasise that in recent years, primarily art films have won the prizes at festivals and contests. Art cinema is still the mainstay of the Russian cultural heritage in the field of cinema. We have a wonderful heritage. By the way, many film directors who have won prizes at film festivals are present here. Art cinema is financed by the Ministry.

Another serious problem that came up for discussion at our meeting a year ago is that we need to revise our spending on the maintenance of the two film universities. We keep them on a lean diet: they have a small wage fund, and obviously that spending must be increased, both for the upkeep of VGIK and of Petersburg University. We will try to put it in the 2012 budget, but unfortunately we could not add it to the 2011 budget.

The previous meeting of the board authorised the development of proposals on amendments to the laws of the Russian Federation aimed at restricting the illegal distribution of audio and video works via the Internet. We are working together with colleagues from the Telecommunications Ministry, the Interior Ministry, the Economics Ministry, and the Justice Ministry on several government instructions to this effect. The problem concerns not only cinema, but also electronic libraries, museums, archives, music, and television content.

Last year we carried out several scientific and practical measures and formulated the principles of the use of protected objects on the Internet, and the Private Law Research Centre developed a plan for introducing priority amendments to the civil legislation. We will now introduce these amendments. Some problems arose in fulfilling the instruction to allocate targeted subsidies for state support of the participation of Russian producers and directors in educational programmes in and outside Russia in 2011 because the law on state support of the film industry does not provide for such funding.

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