Russian Invasion of Ukraine (2022)

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      Russian and Ukrainian Pianists Meet in Texas at Cliburn Competition

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      The war in Ukraine looms over the prestigious contest named for the pianist Van Cliburn, who was a symbol for art transcending global politics.FORT WORTH, Texas — On a sultry recent morning, 30 young pianists from around the world gathered in an auditorium at Texas Christian University here for the start of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, one of the most prestigious contests in classical music.The mood was celebratory. But politics also loomed. The Cliburn, defying pressure to ban Russian competitors after the invasion of Ukraine, had invited six Russians to take part, as well as two pianists from Belarus, which has supported the Russian invasion. A Ukrainian also made the cut.As they signed posters outside the auditorium and were fitted for cowboy boots, a Cliburn tradition, several competitors from those countries said that they found it difficult to think beyond the war.“It’s a tragedy, what’s happening now,” said Dmytro Choni, a 28-year-old pianist from Kyiv. “I’m trying to stay focused on the music.”Dmytro Choni, from Kyiv, is the sole competitor from Ukraine. “I’m trying to stay focused on the music,” he said.Jake Dockins for The New York TimesIlya Shmukler, 27, a competitor from Russia, said he at times felt guilty about the invasion. “The key words for me,” he said, “are shame and responsibility.”The politics surrounding the Cliburn competition show the depths to which the war has upended the performing arts. Largely unaccustomed to grappling with geopolitical concerns, arts organizations are now being forced to resolve difficult questions about the rights of Russian and Ukrainian artists, the morality of cultural boycotts and the limits of free expression. Many institutions have cut ties with artists closely associated with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, while continuing to welcome Russians with less public political leanings.Competitions like the Cliburn, which help determine who rises in the field, have come under intense scrutiny. Some contests, responding to pressure from board members and activists, have banned Russians altogether. Others have announced plans to disinvite Russians, only to face a backlash and reverse course weeks later.The debate over Russian artists echoes similar discussions playing out in the athletic sphere, with Wimbledon saying that it would not allow players from Russia and Belarus this summer, and FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, kicking out all Russian teams from global competition.The Cliburn, named for Van Cliburn, an American whose victory at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958, during the Cold War, was seen as a sign that art could transcend politics, said that it had an obligation to defend Russian artists, who have long been a prominent force in classical music.Audience members at a performance by the Russian pianist Geniushene. The decision to include Russians has alienated some Ukrainian activists and Texas residents.Jake Dockins for The New York TimesThe Cliburn has also taken steps to ensure some degree of political conformity, warning competitors that any statements in support of Putin or the invasion of Ukraine could result in disqualification or the revocation of awards.“I don’t think sanctioning a young pianist who is 22 years old will have an effect on the Russian government,” said Jacques Marquis, the Cliburn’s president and chief executive. “That will play exactly into the playbook of Putin, if we isolate the Russian people.”While the Cliburn was widely applauded in the arts world for allowing Russians to compete, the decision has alienated some Ukrainian activists and Texas residents. Some argued that the only way to put pressure on Moscow to end the invasion is to cut political, economic and cultural ties.“It’s a shame that the Cliburn is not paying attention to human suffering and public opinion,” said the Rev. Pavlo Popov, the leader of a Ukrainian church in suburban Dallas. “How do you influence Russia? It has to come from the people. If they don’t like the war, if they want to be a part of the civilized world, if they want to be part of these competitions, they have to stand for the same values.”Many of the Russian competitors now live outside Russia and have said that they are fiercely opposed to the invasion. Some have taken part in protests and signed petitions demanding the withdrawal of Russian forces.Geniushene at her host family’s home in Fort Worth. To summon the proper character for a series of Brahms Ballades, she said, she thought of suffering in Ukraine.Jake Dockins for The New York TimesAnna Geniushene, a 31-year-old pianist from Moscow, said she felt a duty as an artist to show solidarity with Ukraine. When she tried to summon the right character for a series of Brahms Ballades in the quarterfinal round of the competition, she said, she thought about the grief and suffering in Ukraine.“I have a lot of chats with different people who are really surprised to know that the entire population, the whole nation, is not supporting and rooting for Putin,” said Geniushene, who lives in Lithuania. “Being an artist doesn’t mean that you are a kind of freelancer, that you’re living in a completely different world, and that you forget about politics and everything that you are not involved in. You must speak up and spread the word.”Even as they have denounced the war, many Russian competitors said they were distraught by the scrutiny of Russian artists in the United States and Europe. Some Western cultural institutions have demanded that artists condemn Putin as a condition for performing. Others have removed works by Russian composers in an effort to show solidarity with Ukraine.“The fact that you’re Russian doesn’t mean you’re a bad person,” said Sergey Tanin, 26, a pianist from Siberia who added that he had lost engagements and invitations to competitions since the start of the war. “We shouldn’t be forced to have political discussions before concerts or competitions.”Arseniy Gusev, who grew up in St. Petersburg, says he feels connected to Russia’s past and musical heritage.Jake Dockins for The New York TimesSergey Tanin, from Siberia, said he had lost engagements since the war started.Jake Dockins for The New York TimesRussian participants said they felt that the Cliburn offered a platform to remind the world of a side of Russia distinct from Putin’s bellicosity.Arseniy Gusev, a Russian pianist who grew up in St. Petersburg, said that as an artist, he had grown distant from contemporary Russia but felt intimately tied to its history, and particularly to the music of composers like Scriabin and Rachmaninoff.“I cannot say I belong to this contemporary Russia anymore, but I feel I’m connected to some parts of its past culture,” said Gusev, 23, who will begin a graduate program at the Yale School of Music in fall. “And I think in this way that unites many of us here.”How the Ukraine War Is Affecting the Cultural WorldCard 1 of 6Gavriel Heine. 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      Chekhov Two Ways, With a Robot and Baryshnikov Along for the Ride

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      When the director Igor Golyak began working on a staging of Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard,” he had an idea in mind. “There was a concept,” he said, then interrupted himself. “I’d rather not talk about what it used to be, if that’s OK. The war started, me being from Kyiv and having this affinity for the Russian culture. …”Golyak’s voice trailed off. He was speaking in a coffee shop a block from the Baryshnikov Arts Center, in Midtown Manhattan, where his show, now titled “The Orchard,” is set to begin previews June 7 with a cast headed by the busy stage and screen actress Jessica Hecht as the estate owner Lyubov Ranevskaya. Also onboard is the center’s namesake, Mikhail Baryshnikov, as the old servant Firs.Golyak was born in Kyiv and his family landed in the United States in 1990, part of a wave of Jewish refugees. He finished high school in Boston then studied theater in Moscow — you might say Chekhov is in his bones. But although he felt he had a handle on the Russian writer’s work, the war in Ukraine made him reconsider his approach.Mikhail Baryshnikov, center, on the set of “The Orchard,” at the Baryshnikov Arts Center. “The miracle of Chekhov’s writing is that, no matter where it’s performed, it feels local,” Baryshnikov said.Amir Hamja for The New York Times“How do you do theater and Chekhov when there’s bombings and killings?” he said. “I keep asking ‘How and why and why is it important?’ But not on the theoretical level — on the level that really touches me. For me, every show is very personal. The idea in ‘The Cherry Orchard’ is the loss of a world, loss of connection, loss of each other, loss of this family. It’s a story where a human being is forgotten — Firs is forgotten,” he added. “And right now human being is forgotten.”In the play, a family in financial straits must decide whether it should sell its beloved orchard. In “The Orchard” this will be starkly visualized in a parallel virtual version that complements rather than merely captures the physical one — though streaming viewers get to watch parts of the version being performed live. (Audience members can attend either or both.)The virtual world is a post-apocalyptic dystopia in which the Baryshnikov Arts Center stands in for the orchard. There, the building, now a husk of its former self, is for sale, and virtual audience members can tour it as if they were doing a walk-through of a home on a real estate website.“It’s almost as if you’re inside this building and you find these magical rooms, and in each room, it’s like you’re finding a lost world,” the producer Sara Stackhouse said. “You’re discovering a letter or a memory, then you discover this theater where a play is in progress and you join it.”Jessica Hecht, center, with Nael Nacer during a rehearsal.Amir Hamja for The New York TimesThis grounds the show in a historical reality — Baryshnikov portrays the playwright in the digital version, and Hecht pops up as Chekhov’s wife and his mistress — while nodding to our troubled current circumstances.“The miracle of Chekhov’s writing is that, no matter where it’s performed, it feels local to the culture,” Baryshnikov wrote in an email. “How that translates in Igor’s version remains to be seen. Obviously he speaks the language the play was written in, but he’s taking a lot of risks — technical and artistic — and avoiding clichés.”Something that definitely can’t be called a Chekhov cliché is a 12-foot robotic arm, which sits in the middle of the physical stage — it is part of the family and tries to understand humans — and was painstakingly programmed to execute such tasks as serving coffee or sweeping the floor. (The production process has demanded many hours of Zoom calls with a technical team spread all over the world.)The juxtaposition of past and future (typically, Oana Botez’s costumes for the physical version are a hybrid of period and modern), human and robot feels like yet another leap for Golyak’s Arlekin Players Theater, which is based in Needham, Mass., and has been the rare company to use the pandemic as a creative spur.Until then, it had been a bit of a tough slog. As Golyak, now 43, learned the hard way, a young Russia-trained director was not a hot commodity in the American theater scene of the early 2000s.“Nobody wanted me,” he said. “For an immigrant, it’s very difficult: Where do you go? How do you start? I had an accent — and I still do, of course. I would send résumés but nobody would call me back. At some point I decided that I’m going to stop doing theater because it’s just not possible to make a living.” His day jobs included selling ads for the Yellow Pages.Eventually Golyak befriended a small group of other immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who asked him to help them work on scenes, guide them through what worked or not. He requested a nine-month commitment, and they agreed. Arlekin Players Theater emerged from that initiative, in 2009, and the troupe, which then mostly performed in Russian, developed an esprit de corps.From left: Nacer, Elise Kibler, Mark Nelson, Hecht, John McGinty, Juliet Brett and Baryshnikov during a recent rehearsal.Amir Hamja for The New York Times“We are like a family,” said Darya Denisova, 32, an actor with Arlekin and Golyak’s wife. “We celebrate holidays together, we support each other when there are emergencies. Now that there’s this awful war going on between Russia and Ukraine, we are all trying our best to support people in Ukraine. We’re looking for ways to send more money, to support, to organize more and more help.”The company quickly earned plaudits on the community-theater circuit, but it took the pandemic to give the company a decisive push into greater recognition.Russia-Ukraine War: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3Power consolidation. More

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      Carnegie Hall Musters Stars for a Benefit Concert for Ukraine

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      Headliners from the fields of classical music, jazz and Broadway joined forces to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine and show solidarity with its victims.It was not a typical chorus on the stage of Carnegie Hall: the acclaimed pianist Evgeny Kissin reading from a sheet of paper as he sang Leonard Bernstein’s “Somewhere” with a gathering that included the actor Richard Gere, the mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard and the Broadway star Adrienne Warren.But there they were — four members of the full company that took part in Monday night’s benefit concert in support of Ukraine, an array of star power singing onstage as members of the Ukrainian Chorus Dumka of New York joined from the aisles.“Hold my hand and I’ll take you there,” they sang. “Somehow. Someday. Somewhere.”It was that kind of night at Carnegie Hall, as artists from many disciplines and the institution itself came together to speak out against the Russian invasion of Ukraine and show solidarity with its victims.The stars sang Leonard Bernstein’s “Somewhere” for the finale.Julieta Cervantes for The New York TimesThe Ukrainian Chorus Dumka, an amateur ensemble that specializes in secular and sacred music from Ukraine, opened the concert with the Ukrainian national anthem. Diplomats foreign and domestic offered thanks and spoke about the power of the arts in times of crisis. In between songs, the mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves paused and choked up briefly while speaking about her husband, a doctor, who was in attendance just a day after returning from Ukraine, where he had been helping provide medical care.And there was a message from Ukraine’s first lady.“Music heals and inspires, music boosts hope and confidence,” the first lady, Olena Zelenska, said in a prerecorded video message that played early in the program. “Today’s event is a reminder that Ukraine is an integral part of world culture.”“Music on this stage is a separate important victory,” she added. “It is a sign of unity of our cultures against the chaos and grief of war. And all of you who are in this hall today are our effective and true allies in this cultural struggle.”The hall displayed the blue and yellow colors of Ukraine’s flag.Julieta Cervantes for The New York TimesThe evening included more than a dozen artists and ensembles. There were performances by the jazz vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant, the violinist Midori, the singer Michael Feinstein, the soprano Angel Blue and the Broadway singer Jessica Vosk. Mr. Kissin appeared toward the end of the program — first with the violinist Itzhak Perlman to play John Williams’s Theme from “Schindler’s List,” and then to play Chopin’s Scherzo No. 2 alone.In an interview with The New York Times before the concert, Mr. Kissin said that playing in the benefit felt “so natural for me that I can’t even call it a decision.”“Unfortunately, I am too old and not qualified to take a gun and go to fight in the Ukraine, so I’m doing everything I can: sending money and taking part in concerts for the Ukraine,” he said. “As a Jew who was born and grew up in Russia, I, having belonged to the greatest victims of the Russian xenophobia, I have always felt solidarity with all its other victims, including the Ukrainians.”How the Ukraine War Is Affecting the Cultural WorldCard 1 of 6Gavriel Heine. More

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      ‘A form of hope’: As air-raid sirens sound, a Lviv orchestra opens a summer festival with Mozart’s Requiem.

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      Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York TimesThe audience members took their seats among boxes of medicine, first-aid kits and intravenous tubes. The orchestra was missing four men who are now fighting on the war’s front lines. A handful of guest singers who had fled bombings and bloodshed stood onstage with the choir.The war in Ukraine has upended the meticulous planning that has gone into the Lviv Philharmonic’s annual summer music festival for four decades. But for musicians and the audience, the show must go on.Even as the space — a Baroque, pastel-colored chamber in western Ukraine — has became a coordination site for humanitarian supplies during the war, it has remained a home to musicians and choirs. This spring, instead of playing upbeat music at the festival’s first performance, the orchestra decided to open with Mozart’s Requiem.The concert, performed on Friday night, was a tribute to the Ukrainians lost in three months of war.“This is a place now for medicine — for the body and the soul,” said Liliia Svystovych, a teacher in the audience. “We understand that a requiem is about mourning, that it is sad music. But it is like a prayer. And a prayer is always a form of hope.”About an hour before the concert started, air-raid sirens began to wail.Iolanta Pryshlyak, the director of Lviv’s International Symphony Orchestra, was preparing to delay the concert until the all-clear sounded. As she waited in a back room where doctors were packing up medical supplies, she took phone calls from volunteers who were driving aid to Ukraine’s embattled east.Ms. Pryshlyak, 59, is not only the orchestra director now. Since the invasion began, she has also directed the flow of supplies that pass through the theater on their way to the war’s front lines. It is her base for both jobs.She had been up since 4 a.m., and she was tired: “I’m just running on autopilot.”Still, she was looking forward to a night of music. “War makes your heart like a stone,” she said. “But music can soften it again.”Downstairs, the orchestra’s conductor, Volodymyr Syvokhip, put on a suit in his office as a baritone soloist sang arpeggios in a nearby room.For weeks, performers had rehearsed amid towers of humanitarian aid boxes as volunteers and doctors organized supplies all around them. Sometimes the musicians would help the aid workers. And sometimes the medics would stop their work to listen to them play.“We are supporting each other through this, in some way,” Mr. Syvokhip said with a smile.As he went onstage, Mr. Syvokhip told the audience that as air-raid sirens sounded in Lviv, a bomb in the eastern Kharkiv region had reduced a cultural center to rubble, and with it, the local theater.When the requiem ended, members of the orchestra and their audience were in tears.“The sound of those alarms and sirens combined in our heads with the words of the conductor, and we understood why musicians must not keep silent,” said Natalia Dub, a headmistress at a local academy.She had put as much care into her appearance this year as she had for summer festivals before it, with red lipstick and a string of pearls.“We need to come here,” she said. “This is the place we need to be most of all.” More

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      Cannes Film Festival Impacted by the War in Ukraine

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      The war in Ukraine is casting a long shadow over this year’s Cannes Film Festival. On Tuesday, Volodymyr Zelensky, the country’s president, addressed the event’s opening ceremony, with stirring rhetoric and Charlie Chaplin quotes.But the conflict had already had an impact on the festival long before Zelensky’s appearance. Within days of Russia’s invasion, in February, some of Ukraine’s leading movie directors and producers called on film festivals worldwide to boycott Russians, as a sign of support. Cannes said in a statement in March that it would no longer “welcome official Russian delegations, nor accept the presence of anyone linked to the Russian government,” but added that it would not ban Russian directors.There is one major Russian director at this year’s event: Kirill Serebrennikov, who is competing for the Palme d’Or with “Tchaikovsky’s Wife.” The Cannes press office told The Hollywood Reporter it had approved “only a few” Russian media outlets to cover the event, and that all of those outlets opposed the war. It was unclear, however, if any state news outlets had requested accreditation, and the festival did not respond to emailed questions.Two movies by Ukrainian directors are on the festival’s program: Maksim Nakonechnyi’s “Butterfly Vision” and Sergei Loznitsa’s “The Natural History of Destruction.” But even those choices might stir controversy. In March, the Ukrainian Film Academy expelled Loznitsa, because he did not support its call to boycott Russian movies.A scene from Sergei Loznitsa’s “The Natural History of Destruction.”Progress FilmRita Burkovska in “Butterfly Vision.”
      “When I hear calls to ban Russian films, I think of my Russian friends — decent and honorable people,” Loznitsa told The New York Times in March. “We cannot judge people by their passports,” he added: “They are victims of this war, just like we are.” More

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      Zelensky Addresses Cannes Film Festival Opening Ceremony

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      President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine gave a virtual address to the Cannes Film Festival opening ceremony on Tuesday, referencing Charlie Chaplin’s celebrated satire of fascism to urge some of the world’s highest-profile stars and filmmakers to similarly rise to the occasion in the face of a war “that can set the whole continent ablaze.”“The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish,” Zelensky said, quoting Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator.”Appearing via satellite in his now signature military green shirt, Zelensky lionized the power of film in his address and received a standing ovation from the crowd gathered on the French Riviera.“Again, then as now, there is a dictator,” Zelensky said. “Again, then as now, there is a war for freedom. Again, then as now, cinema must not be silent.”The address was his latest stop on a persistent and wide-ranging virtual diplomatic tour to keep global attention on his country’s plight. Since Russia’s invasion began in late February, he has delivered addresses via video link to governments of countries as large as the United States and as small as Malta on a regular basis.In April, he made a surprise virtual address at the Grammys, telling the audience that his country’s musicians were wearing “body armor instead of tuxedos.”“They sing to the wounded in hospitals,” he said, “even to those who can’t hear them.”Later that month, he made a live-streamed appearance at the Venice Biennale. Speaking at the opening of the exhibition “This is Ukraine,” Mr. Zelensky vividly described the horrors that his people were enduring. With a digital Ukrainian flag fluttering behind him, he said: “There are no tyrannies that would not try to limit art. Because they can see the power of art. Art can tell the world things that cannot be shared otherwise.”Mr. Zelensky’s oratory efforts have been remarkably effective in securing his country the weapons, aid and international support needed to fight Russia. He is a former actor, and starred as an unlikely Ukrainian president in “Servant of the People,” a TV satire that prefaced his own, actual election to the presidency in 2019.Aurelien Breeden More

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      Carnegie Hall Will Host Concert in Support of Ukraine

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      Carnegie Hall said on Tuesday that it would host a concert in support of Ukraine later this month, to show solidarity with the Ukrainian people, express opposition to the Russian invasion and raise relief funds.The benefit, “Concert for Ukraine,” is to take place on May 23 at 8 p.m., and will feature more than a dozen artists and ensembles, including the Russian-born pianist Evgeny Kissin, the violinist Itzhak Perlman, the jazz vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant and the singer Michael Feinstein.The Ukrainian Chorus Dumka of New York, an amateur ensemble that specializes in secular and sacred music from Ukraine, will also perform.“Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it has been heartbreaking to witness the devastation that has been wrought there over the last two months,” Clive Gillinson, Carnegie’s executive and artistic director, said in a statement. “In this time of crisis, it is important to remember that there are active ways that we can all play a part in helping those who are suffering and under attack.”Several benefits have been held by New York arts groups in support of Ukraine since the start of the invasion. In March, the Metropolitan Opera staged a concert featuring Ukraine’s national anthem and a piece by the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov, among others.Carnegie’s leaders have used the hall’s platform to defend Ukraine. Last week, in announcing its 2022-23 season, the hall said it would host the Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine in February. The ensemble will play Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, featuring the Ukrainian American pianist Stanislav Khristenko, Brahms’s “Tragic Overture” and Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony, as part of a tour led by the Ukrainian American conductor Theodore Kuchar.“This is a turning point in history,” Gillinson said in announcing the season. “It’s really, really important that a dictator does not win. We felt we needed to very overtly support Ukraine.”Carnegie was among the first cultural institutions to fire artists with ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia after his order to invade Ukraine. In February, the hall canceled appearances by the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, a longtime supporter of Putin, and the Russian pianist Denis Matsuev, who also has ties to Putin.At the same time, Gillinson has warned that arts groups should not discriminate against Russian performers on the basis of nationality and should be careful to avoid penalizing performers who are reluctant to publicize their views on the war.The benefit will feature a number of opera stars, including the soprano Angel Blue and the mezzo-sopranos Denyce Graves and Isabel Leonard; the violinist Midori; the mandolinist Chris Thile; the Broadway singers Jessica Vosk and Adrienne Warren; and musicians from Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, a group of young artists.Carnegie said proceeds would go to Direct Relief, a humanitarian aid group that supports relief efforts in Ukraine. More

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      In Echo of Soviet Era, Russia’s Movie Theaters Turn to Pirate Screenings

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      In a Cold War throwback, some venues are showing bootleg versions after Hollywood studios pulled films from the country. Still, viewer numbers have tanked.Since the invasion of Ukraine, Hollywood’s biggest studios have stopped releasing movies in Russia, and Netflix has ceased service there. But recently, some of the companies’ films have started appearing in Russian movie theaters — illegally.The screenings are reminiscent of the Soviet era, when the only way to see most Western films was to get access to a pirated version. Whereas those movies made their way to Russians in the form of smuggled VHS tapes, today, cinemas in the country have a simpler, faster method: the internet. Numerous websites offer bootleg copies of movies that take minutes to download.Some theaters in Russia are now openly screening pirated movies; others are being more careful, allowing private individuals to rent out spaces to show films, free or for a fee. One group, for example, rented out several screening rooms at a movie theater in Yekaterinburg, then used social media to invite people to buy tickets to watch “The Batman.”Theatergoers can also see “The Batman” in Ivanovo, a city about a five-hour drive from Moscow, in at least one venue. In Makhachkala, capital of the Dagestan region, in the Caucasus, a movie theater is screening “Don’t Look Up”; and in Chita, a city near the border with Mongolia, parents can take their children to watch “Turning Red,” the animated film from Disney and Pixar.Jennifer Lawrence as Kate Dibiasky and Leonardo DiCaprio as Dr. Randall Mindy in “Don’t Look Up.”Niko Tavernise/NetflixIn “Turning Red,” an animated Disney/Pixar feature, a teenager is transformed into a giant red panda.Disney+Robert Pattinson is the star of “The Batman.”Warner Bros.These surreptitious screenings are the latest attempt by movie theaters in Russia to survive after American studios like Disney, Warner Brothers and Paramount left the country in protest. Before the war in Ukraine, movies produced in the United States made up about 70 percent of the Russian film market, according to state media.But despite the attempts to draw viewers, last month, Russians barely went to the movies. Theaters saw ticket sales fall by about half in March, compared with the same period last year, according to the country’s Association of Theater Owners.Artem Komolyatov, 31, a video game producer in Moscow, noticed the shift when he and his wife went on a Friday date to the movies a few weeks ago. With everything that has been going on politically, the two of them wanted to spend a couple of hours in a relaxed environment with other people, Komolyatov said, “watching something together, maybe laughing and crying.”They chose “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” a film from the independent American studio A24, which stopped releasing films in Russia in mid-April.The scene they found when they arrived at the movie theater was bizarre, Komolyatov said. “Besides us, there were three other people,” he said. “We went at 8 p.m. on a weekend. Usually the theater is completely full.”The Cinema Park complex in Moscow on April 12. The poster on the right is for “Uncharted,” with Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg, which came out just before the Ukraine war started.Nikolay Vinokurov/AlamyGiven the dearth of viewers and of content, the Association of Theater Owners predicted that at least half the movie theaters in Russia would go out of business in the next two months.Even if that prognosis is true, history has shown that films will reach audiences with or without legal channels. Decades ago, Soviet citizens gathered in empty office spaces, living rooms and cultural centers to view pirated copies of Western classics like “Rocky,” “The Terminator,” and “9 ½ Weeks” that had made their way behind the Iron Curtain.During the tumultuous years that followed the crumbling of the Soviet Union, piracy continued to be the main access point for Hollywood films in Russia. Movies recorded on VHS tapes that were sold at local markets were often clearly shot on a hand-held camcorder in a movie theater. Continuing a Soviet tradition, the movies were dubbed into Russian with a time delay by voice actors, often just one for all the male characters, and another for the women.Once the first Western-style movie theater opened in 1996 in Moscow, illegal distribution paths began to peter out, according to a study by the Social Science Research Council, a New York-based nonprofit. In the early 2000s, Russians flocked to theaters to see legally distributed global hits like “Avatar” and “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.” Russia became the ninth-largest foreign box office market, according to the Motion Picture Association.Russia-Ukraine War: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3Biden’s speech. More