Russia’s long running avant-garde film festival, Moscow Premiere, a champion of Russian LGBT and anti-fascist cinema, was cancelled last week and replaced by a “positive, youth-orientated” alternative, reports Dazed.
The new festival is being run by Yevgeny Gerasimov, a high-ranking member of Putin’s Kremlin. The organizer of Moscow Premiere said that there was no way he could work with Gerasimov.
The cancellation is seen as part of a wider crackdown by the Kremlin on LGBT activities in Russia.
According to Dazed, it’s illegal to show people under 18 any movies about homosexuality in Russia; so this emphasis on youth is a covert way of informing ground-breaking filmmakers and interested viewers not to bother. Earlier this year, Russia also cut the line-up of the Moscow International Film Festival, but most of the films cleaved were those with any themes deemed undesirable.
