I think it’s a common opinion that no matter what race, age or social strata is – everybody likes watching films

I think it’s a common opinion that no matter what race, age or social strata is – everybody likes watching films. Therefore cinema is so wide spread and popular. It’s a great source of visible information and the majority of us would agree that it’s an international kind of art.

Yet every culture and country has got its own peculiarities, making the cinematograph worldwide so various. Being an evidence of a nation’s way of thinking and mentality it truly represents a nation in general. As a rule both virtues and flaws peculiar for that or another area are depicted in film and that demonstrates that we’re all human beings similar as well as different.

At first, cinema was originated by Lumiere brothers, but several enterprising Americans were able to recognize an enormous power in cinema very soon. Few years later, the idea was embodied in Hollywood, a district n Los-Angeles, where several motion picture studios appeared. Well-known today Paramount, Warner Bros. film companies were among them.  By 1920, Hollywood had become world-famous as the center of the United States film industry. In 1941 there was shot Citizen Kane film that is frequently cited in critics' polls as the greatest film of all time. The major film studios of Hollywood are the primary source of the most commercially successful movies in the world, such as Gone with the Wind (1939), Star Wars (1977), Titanic (1997), and Avatar (2009). Today, American film studios collectively generate several hundred movies every year, making the United States the third most prolific producer of films in the world — the first being India and the second being Nigeria. The revenues producers get in the US have been increasing, thus they made up almost an 11-billion income in 2011 overall.  Such a great amount of films makes talented actors and professional cinema staff demanded there.   The Hollywood cinema industry has definitely been a major force all over the Globe, defining the cinema trends of the future. At present this industry is represented by a wide array of films to any taste.

The United Kingdom has had a major influence on modern cinema. It’s notable for Some of the most commercially successful films of all time have been produced in the United Kingdom, including the two highest-grossing film franchises (Harry Potter and James Bond). Ealing Studios has a claim to being the oldest continuously working film studio facility in the world. The cultures of the UK and the US are pretty similar, that’s why there’re plenty of films based on British stories, events or people, but shot Hollywood, often in cooperation with the British and their actors taking part in the shots.

Unfortunately cinema industry in this counry significantly lags behind that of European and American countries. But nevertheless Belarus has been producing films for nearly 80 years already. So in 1924 the first film laboratory in Belarus was set up.  And The first Belarusian feature film Forest True Story was produced two years later, in 1926. «Soviet Belarus» studio also know today as belarusfilm was founded in 1928 

Currently, the National Film Studio Belarusfilm may produce 10-12 feature films, 20-25 documentaries and 4—5 animated cartoons a year. The selection of films, as you can see is really poor and their quality leaves much to be desired.  A lot of famous Russian directors like, for instance, Nikita Mikhalkov, prefer to work in Belarus. The studio is notable for «The Brest Fortress», the film that won a universal acclaim among the wide audience. It is one of the few Belarusian films that were not only a success, but also a box – office hit.