Second season of Friends of St. Petersburg festival of creative and educational projects launched
RELEASE
Release
The opening ceremony for the Second Annual Friends of St. Petersburg Festival took place at the Ilya Repin St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts. The festival is held under the auspices of Gazprom.
The theme of the Friends of St. Petersburg festival's second season is “Reflection”. This theme encourages all participants and guests to find their reflections in St. Petersburg's environment and think of what they can personally do for their beloved city and how they can influence its development.
The festival is taking place on October 5–8 at more than 35 city sites, such as museums, theaters, universities, libraries, and cinema halls.
The guests of the festival are welcome to visit music concerts and theatrical performances, take tours of the city and its museums, and participate in creative master classes, including those aimed at children of different ages. This year, the festival also has a business program which includes discussion panels involving experts who specialize in the fields of culture, architecture and urban studies.
The events of the festival are free of charge for everyone upon online pre-registration at the fest.spbfriends.ru website.
During the festival's opening ceremony, awards were handed out to the participants of the Friends of St. Petersburg project who had achieved the most prominent results in the “Immersion”, “Tutorship”, “Laboratory”, “Volunteers”, and “Creative Bureau” lines of the project.
Another event held during the opening ceremony was the premiere of the film titled “Empresses”, which tells about Catherine I, Anna Ioannovna and Elizabeth Petrovna, played by Ksenia Utekhina, Anna Ukolova and Yulia Peresild. The film will be released to the general public on October 26.
The new documentary drama is a follow-up to the “Peter I: the Last Tsar and the First Emperor” film. Both motion pictures had been created by Gazprom-Media Holding at the request of and with support from Gazprom.
“With the “Empresses” film, we continue the series of historical films titled “Russia”, which was successfully launched last year with the motion picture about Peter I. We are especially pleased that it is already becoming a good tradition to hold the film premieres at the Friends of St. Petersburg festival. The new film is about an amazing period of time in Russia's history, the era of court intrigue and palace coups, the era when the country was under the reign of empresses. This motion picture is a documentary drama: the same genre that was chosen by director Andrey Kravchuk for the first film of the series. The director's creative solution makes it possible to combine the brilliant performance of the actors with the accurate historical facts delivered by our contemporaries, distinguished experts in history and culture,” said Alexander Zharov, Director General of Gazprom-Media Holding.
Background
The Friends of St. Petersburg comprehensive social project of Gazprom has been implemented since 2020. The project's core mission is to facilitate the preservation of the cultural heritage and historical identity of St. Petersburg in today's world.
The main lines of activities under the project are as follows: “Immersion”, “Tutorship”, “Laboratory”, “Volunteers”, “Creative Bureau”, and the Friends of St. Petersburg festival.
“Immersion” is an educational program for the youth that includes elements of a master class and involves leading professionals in the spheres of conservation, museum affairs, urban studies, and urban development policy. The program offers a broad audience a deeper immersion into the history and culture of St. Petersburg.
“Tutorship” is a program that includes professional master classes and an interdisciplinary course for the students of industry-specific universities. Said activities are implemented at the sites of the largest conservation organizations with the support of the Committee for State Control, Use and Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments of St. Petersburg.
“Laboratory” is for students and young specialists to perform practical research work in the spheres of architecture, urban studies and related disciplines.
“Creative Bureau” brings together both beginning and professional editors, reviewers, critics, journalists, bloggers, photographers, video bloggers, sociologists, cultural scientists, and urban studies specialists who write about St. Petersburg and the cultural & historical projects implemented under the Friends of St. Petersburg project. Within the framework of this program, young specialists jointly with experts work on the Media Portal and the social networks of the project, as well as conduct public opinion surveys among the city audience.
“Volunteers” is a voluntary program under the Friends of St. Petersburg project conducted in cooperation with all participants of the city's cultural space under the auspices of Gazprom.
The Friends of St. Petersburg festival is an annual city event. The first edition of the festival took place on October 14–16, 2022, at 33 museum, exhibition & concert spaces, as well as city sites, and included numerous events, such as guided tours, lectures, artistic meetings, master classes, concerts, contemporary art exhibitions & installations, and film screenings. The festival was attended by over 21,000 people.