Welcome Eastern Europe!

Lena Koutsenko Commercial Director RUSCICO Russia

How do you evaluate the Asia-Pacific region for your business? Have you made any sales in the Asia-Pacific region? Can you name some programs that were on the air in the Asia-Pacific region?

Asia Pacific region is one of our key markets. Close political and cultural ties between China and Russia allowed Chinese audience to get to know and like Russian cinema. Russian classics is very much appreciated there, and the masterpieces of Mark Donskoy, Sergey Gerasimov, whose 100 th anniversary was celebrated this year, and Sergey Rostotsky were already broadcasted there. Growing interest to Russian culture in general and Russian cinema in particular in Japan, resulted in several deals for us. Japanese distributors have expressed a huge interest to the films about World War II, and we have licensed two packages including "In Flight Are the "Night Witches", "Target for Death", "Deer Hunting". And that is not a surprise for us as the World War II is generally percepted through the American blockbusters while there are lots of Russian films offering a different point of view on this war.

In Flight are the "Night Witches"

As a result of our long-term cooperation with IVC ( Japan ) over 50 Russian features in digitally restored quality with professionally made Japanese subtitles have already become available on DVD in Japan. And we'll be bringing more to the market, for instance, Christmas romantic comedy "Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!" and a fairy tale "Father Frost" as well as the epic "Quiet Flows the Don".

What do you expect from your trip to ATF?

At ATF we hope to build awareness of Russian classics among buyers from the region. We'll put the emphasis on the screen adaptations of famous Russian literary classics such as novels by Pushkin, Lermontov, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Gorky and Sholokhov, which might appeal to the public here.