St Petersburg will play host to its third annual International Film Festival on June 23-29, featuring more than 80 films from all over the world.
Gina Lollobrigida and acclaimed French director Agnes Varda will be honored guests at the festival, which is divided into four parts. Ms Varda's latest film "101 Nights" will have its Russian premiere during the course of the event.
The first of these is called the Festival of Festivals and features almost 40 films, all of which have been acclaimed by critics and audiences at recent film festivals. Many of them have won major awards and all of them were produced in the last three years.
Highlights of this section of the festival include "Glitterbug," from renowned British director Derek Jarman.
Jarman died of AIDS complications last year before completing the film, which was finished after his death.
There are several other English-language films from British and Canadian directors, including Ken Loach's stark and moving piece "Raining Stones."
The second section of the festival is entitled New Russian Film and showcases 16 films from Russian directors made in the last year.
The third section consists of a Pier Paolo Pasolini retrospective that features the 25 films that form the whole of the Italian director's oeuvre. The films span the years 1961 to 1975. It is the first time that all of Pasolini's films will be shown in Russia. In fact, some of these films have never even been shown in the director's native Italy.
Finally, there will be a series of films screened under the heading "100 Years of World Cinema. The Stars of World Cinema and their Russian Experiences."
This section features a variety of Russian epics based on world history or Russian classics which feature stars such as Greta Garbo (in "Anna Karenina" and "Ninotchka"), Marlene Dietrich ("The Scarlet Empress"), and Henry Fonda ("War And Peace").
Films will be shown at the Kolizey, Avrora, Barrikada and Molodyozhny theaters and the festival office will be at Dom Zhurnalistov, 70 Nevsky Prospect.
Films will be shown with voice-over dubbing in Russian. Several non-English films will have subtitles in English.
*Prospects will bring you more comprehensive information next week.(SPP)