‘Green Carnation’ Festival Opens as Part of Sochi 2014 Cultural Programme

The opening ceremony of the first “Green Carnation” festival of ecological environmental cinema is set to take place on Friday, 22 October in Sochi.

The films included in the festival will be presented by the stars of Russian cinema such as Alexey Petrenko, Natalia Bondarchuk and Stanislav Lyubshin.

The best films from the festival will be shortlisted by the panel of judges, headed up by cinema director Konstantin Lopushansky, and the winner will be given a statue by Gregory Pototsky, the famous Russian sculptor.

The festival, organized by the Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee, together with the “Green Carnation” fund for developing cultural, educational and ecological initiatives and the international fund for social programmes, is part of the “Sochi 2010-2014” Cultural programme, which is being held in honour of the 2014 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

The main theme of the festival is the relationship between people and nature. Amongst the main tasks of “Green Carnation” is the creation of a Russian cultural-ecological project, set up in an attempt to change the public’s perception of ecological matters.

The “Green Carnation” festival will last four days. During the festival, more than 30 full-length (more than 60 minutes) and short (60 minutes or less) films will be demonstrated; including a number of children’s films and classic films on show. The films were selected by a co-ordination committee headed by Vyacheslav Shmyrov, the festival’s artistic director and a film critic.

The films will be shown in various air pavilions around Sochi, which simultaneously act as unique film sets, whilst the multi-media technology of the full dome theatre ensures the high-quality of the show.

The “Green Carnation” festival of ecological cinema is the first part of the large Green Art cultural-ecological festival being held as part of the Cultural Olympiad in Sochi. The Green Art project will last for the four years of the Olympiad, while 2011 will be the “Year of Theatre” (theatre of ecological aesthetics, theatre of ecological trends and children’s puppet festival “Carnival of Animals”), 2012 will be the “Year of Music” (ecological festival of “Music on Water”) and 2013 will be the “Year of Museums” (festival of modern ecological art and photography and the ecological art tour “Masterpieces of Russian art on the streets of Sochi”).