Recently, more and more voices have been heard calling for a quota for showing domestic films for cinemas, they even call a figure of 24% of the total screen time. Supporters of this measure explain their demands by concern for development and the need to support Russian cinema. But when solving this issue, one should take into account how artificially created greenhouse conditions can stimulate the development of domestic cinema.
On the initiative of the Ministry of Economic Development, the Ministry of Culture was instructed to work out the issue of the need for a quota for domestic films to be shown in cinemas. The developers of the project for the introduction of quotas, as is often the case, appeal to the experience of foreign countries. Named, in particular, France, Italy and Austria, where such quotas have been introduced and amount to 43, 21 and 16%, respectively.
As an alternative to the quota, it is proposed to limit the number of foreign films that will be shown on Russian screens. Due to the fact that Russia plans to join the WTO, the introduction of quotas will already become unacceptable, so the Ministry of Economic Development refers to the experience of China and India, where the annual number of imported films is 30 and 100 films.
Practitioners and film distributors, however, are already raising their objections to the artificial limitation on the number of foreign films on Russian screens. They believe that quotas will especially negatively affect those cinemas that are located in small provincial cities, where viewers can only be attracted by high-profile foreign premieres.
The second argument against is the well-founded doubt that such favorable conditions will have a positive effect on the quality of the films produced. Without free competition, filmmakers will simply start churning out films for the day, trying to fill the quota. In addition, doubts are expressed that the filmmaking in Russia is capable of producing the number of films required for the named 24%. The required quota will simply not be provided, and you will have to get to it by showing retrospectives, which will also not be an incentive for the development of the Russian film industry.
The measure that can have a positive effect on the development of domestic cinematography may be the introduction of a tax levy on foreign films. The amount of the collection will be purposefully directed to the protection and support of our cinema.
