Kinotavr lineup announced

Organisers of the premier Russian film festival Kinotavr, which is to be held in Sochi from June 7 to 14, have revealed the 12 features selected for the main competition. They include three movies that are having their international premieres at Cannes International Film Festival this month - Boris Khlebnikov's "Sumasshedshaya Pomoshch" ("Help Gone Mad"), Ivan Vyrypayev's "Kislorod" ("Oxygen") and Nikolai Khomeriki's "Skazka Pro Temnotu" ("A Fairy Tale about Darkness") - as well as Vasily Sigarev's "Volchok" ("Spinning Top"), Andrei Proshkin's "Minnesota" and Ivan Dykhovichny's "Yevropa-Aziya" ("Europe-Asia"). "We chose from 62 absolutely new features," the festival's program director told RIA Novosti. The organisers admitted that they may not have as many feature films to choose from next year, given the negative impact of the global economic downturn on the national film industry.

More art on the Moscow metro

The Moscow metro's Akvarel train, which is designed as an art gallery and features copies of prominent paintings by Russian artists, has been renovated, acquiring more copies of paintings, RIA Novosti reported. Copies of works by Karl Briullov, Isaac Levitan, Ilya Repin and Nikolai Roerich have been added to the gallery on wheels. The train was originally launched on June 1, 2007, and runs on the blue Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line.

Theater festival to be held at Chekhov's museum

The international theater festival Melikhovo Spring kicks off on Sunday, May 17, at the country estate Melikhovo, south of Moscow, where renowned Russian author Anton Chekhov lived from 1892 to 1899, RIA Novosti reported. The festival's director Vladimir Baicher told RIA that the event's 10th edition would primarily feature theaters from cities that the author visited or lived in, including Sumy, Lvov and Taganrog. The only exception will be the Chekhov Theater from Madrid. "Spain is a country where Chekhov never went but he dreamed of visiting it, and so a Spanish theater is taking part in the festival," Baicher said. The festival's opening performance will be "Marriage" by the Paris-based Ankinea Theatre. In addition to Melikhovo, the towns of Chekhov and Serpukhov will host festival performances.

Mila too expensive for Eurovision: report

Actress and model Mila Jovovic won't be one of the hosts of the Eurovision Song Contest's final because the event's organizers refused to pay the fee she demanded, the Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda reported. "We did have long and tiresome negotiations with one American actress," Konstantin Ernst, general producer of Channel One, which is in charge of organizing Moscow's Eurovision, was quoted as saying in the report, adding that the size of the demanded fee was the reason why the negotiations failed. The newspaper speculated that although Jovovic's name was not mentioned, Ernst was talking about her, as rumours that Jovovic could become the female host of the ceremony had been around for a while. Channel One announced that TV presenter Ivan Urgant and singer Alsou would be hosts of the contest's final, scheduled to be held at the Olimpiisky sports center on May 16.

Vladimir Kozlov