“Impairment of cinema interests is an impairment of viewer interests”: problems of Soviet film distribution and quality of films in the texts of the “thaw” period

This article analyzes the texts of the “Thaw” period: a note from the manager of the Moscow city film distribution office N. Bobrov (December 1957), an article by playwright A. Kapler “Thoughts at the entrance to the cinema”, which was published in “Literary Newspaper” (July 1962), and a draft version of the article by the writer and critic H. Khersonsky “Creativity and cinema”, written in the early 1960s. These texts appeared in the context of the transformation of the social space of Soviet cinema, caused by the release of a large number of feature films with new problems and different approaches, as well as a significant influx of moviegoers. It should be say the authors of the texts had their hopes on the Union of Cinematographers of the USSR which was founded in 1957-1965. They outlined some serious problems of Soviet film distribution and raised the question of the quality of films, while offering their solutions. Such a situation, when the shortcomings of film distribution and errors in the process of making films were brought up in some cases for wide discussion in the press, became possible in the conditions of the weakening of the Soviet totalitarian system and the provision of some initiative from the bottom by the authorities. However, many of the proposals contained in these texts, with rare exceptions, did were not introduced in the Soviet cinema system until the start of the “Perestroika” policy.