On 22 December 2011, a meeting took place in Moscow between the management of the Federal Cinema Foundation and seven film production companies benefitting from the foundation’s support, together with representatives of cinema chains forming part of the Kinoalliance non-profit partnership.
According to Sergei Tolstikov, Executive Director of the Cinema Foundation, a decision was taken at the meeting whereby film distributors will lend support to cinemas across Russia during the transition to digital cinema exhibition.
Oleg Berezin, managing director of Nevafilm and president of Kinoalliance, explained that this concerns the Virtual Print Free system, which is in use practically the world over. Essentially, this will involve a distributor, who, by making savings on the print of a digital copy (costing 10 times cheaper than standard film on average) will be able to allocate approximately half of the money saved to cinemas in order to aid the transition to digital format. As of December 2011, of the 2,600 screens in Russia, approximately half have made this transition to digital. It has proved difficult for the rest to be able to purchase the new equipment themselves, which costs over EUR 100,000. Support from the distributors will help many small cinemas stay open, especially given that copies on film are no longer expected to be shown in cinemas within the next 12–18 months.
By the end of January 2012, a document must be prepared with specific proposals concerning the introduction of the VPF system in Russia.