FILM DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM AND THE SOVIET RURAL AUDIENCE (MID 1950S - 1980S)
O.V. GORBACHEV
Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B.N. Yeltsin, 51, Lenina Ave., Ekaterinburg, 620000, Russian Federation
Keywords: media communication, Soviet cinema, film distribution, rural population, cinema audience, television, Sverdlovsk region, film repertoire
Abstract
The article substantiates the need for a historical study of the rural cinema audience in the context of regularities of development of the communication environment. Cinema and the film distribution system are viewed as a space of dialogue between the government and society in the USSR. Based on documents regulating the film industry’s development and sociological studies of cinema rural audiences, it is shown that the cinema’s ideological function was gradually lost, while the commercial component in film distribution strengthened in the 1950-1980s. Rural projection facilities, unable to provide theatrical distribution’s income comparable to city cinemas, nevertheless made a significant contribution to replenish the local Soviets’ budgets. Technological modernization of the film screening, necessary due to growing competition with television, was not possible in rural areas due to the inapplicability of the large cinema model. Therefore, until the late Soviet era, the main criterion of the rural cinema network development was the extensive growth in the number of film projectors. This approach did not make it possible to ensure the proper quality of film screening, and caused a reduction in the rural film audience since the 1970s. The specificity of rural cinema consumption was determined by significant spectator activity under the information hunger conditions, the impossibility of choosing a film, and less exacting requirements of the quality of films and film screenings. Nevertheless, as the communication environment expanded, the rural audience increasingly gravitated toward urban cinema standards. As in the city, the average age of cinema visitors was steadily declining, and school children remained the most active cinema visitors. With the abolition of ideological restrictions and further commercialization of film distribution under “perestroika” conditions, the inefficient rural film screening system lost hopelessly in the competition with television and video gaining popularity, and was doomed to disappear.
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