Publications
The first Russian open-air events — music festivals with many thousands of annual attendees — will take off early this summer. Some of them have already been held, while others will take place during these festive days or are only being prepared. We offer you a brief review of most exciting festivals.
“This year we are ready to receive up to 400,000 people and have even set up twice as many toilets as we did last year,” says Eva Bespalova, organizer of the Rock over the Volga festival. Last year the festival near Samara was visited by 250,000 people and this number keeps growing with each passing year. The...
BookExpo 2012 has come to a close in New York. This year Russia was a guest of honor, presenting its Read Russia program aimed at promoting contemporary Russian literature in the English-speaking world. The newspaper Kommersant published an interview about the prospects of this initiative with Andrew Nurnberg, one of the most influential and experienced literary agents representing Russian authors abroad.
– Those who try to promote foreign books in the English-speaking world usually encounter a lack of desire to accept something alien, written in a different language. In this light the prospects of the Read Russia campaign do not seem...
On Tuesday, American writer Ray Bradbury died in his own house at 91. He was a classic of American and the world science fiction, even though the author of The Martian Chronicles and Dandelion Wine did not consider himself a fantasy writer. Actually he thought only one of his works belonged to the sci-fi genre, namely the Farenheit 451 novel. In Russia Bradbury's works were tremendously popular back in the days of the Soviet Union — they were published in large print-runs and adapted to screen by both filmmakers and cartoonists. Yet the author loved to joke that he did not make even a ruble by that popularity. Mr Bradbury acknowledged...
On May 30 the six iron horses driven by Nike was returned to its former place after a speedy restoration. The Arch of Triumph on Kutuzovsky Avenue in Moscow regained its original look. On September 8, when the Battle of Borodino is commemorated, the memorial complex will be officially opened.
A joyful event?
You bet! Especially given that the Arch of Triumph saw many days of trouble. In 1814 Emperor Alexander I ordered the erection of a wooden arch in Moscow's Triumph Square in anticipation of the return of the triumphant soldiers. They were in a hurry and had no time to set up a permanent structure or to restore half of Moscow's houses...
The All-Russian Festival “Russian language as the national asset of peoples of the Russian Federation” is being organized by Moscow Sholokhov State University of Humanities with the assistance of MAPRYAL – the International Association of Russian Language and Literature Teachers – and the Russian Ministry of Education. It is a component of the target national program “Russian Language.” Notwithstanding, the festival did not degraded into a public crib.
The organizers admit that this February’s event greatly surpassed their expectations. Teachers and students from 83 subjects of the Russian Federation...
Last Sunday a curtain dropped on the 65th Cannes Film Festival, where 22 movies participated in the main competition. All of them were made by world-renowned and even iconic directors who repeatedly take part in this festival. No place was found here for debutants and women, which caused protests from local feminists yelling, “Long Live the Woman!” at a number of festival events.
Suffering “Love”
The Grand Jury was chaired by Italian filmmaker Nanni Moretti. As you probably know, The Palm d’Or was awarded to the Austrian picture Love (“Amour”) by Michael Haneke who thus won this much-desired award...
