Saint-Petersburg Excursions

Recently, the Hermitage had organized a specialized visit for the journalists and the elite of the global museum community into the "inner sanctum" - the reconstructed rooms of the building of the General Staff. In the part of the building that is adjacent to the Arch of the General Staff, the repairs are nearly complete. Together with journalists, the renovation works were visited by the Director of the British Museum - Neil MacGregor, the President-Director of the Louvre - Henri Loyrette, the Director of the Paris Centre Pompidou - Alfred Packman and, of course, the Director of the Hermitage - Mikhail Piotrovsky. All of them are an advisory board of the Hermitage - a collegiate body, in discussing the strategy of the museum. The eastern wing of the General Staff Building on Palace Square was allocated to the Hermitage in 1993. In 2008, there was officially presented the project of reconstruction of the building, designed by St. Petersburg's architectural studio "Studio 44", and the zero cycle of works had started. The project is expected to clear five courtyards of the building, cover them with glass domes and transform into indoor atriums. The buildings between the courtyards will turn into a single suite of exhibition halls. The viewer will be able to go through this suite, enjoying art in the halls and gardens in the glass-covered yards. The building will remain exactly the same from outside. The interior works in the exhibition rooms with a total area of about 600 square meters are finishing now. The movement of Hermitage collections into the General Staff building will begin in September 2010, and the new halls will open for the public in December 2010. The first to be opened, will be the halls of contemporary art, the student club and part of the gallery of Shchukin and Morozov, which will be located in the courtyards area.

An open-air cinema and the International festival of short films and animation movies OPEN CINEMA starts in Saint-Petersburg. It will happen from 3 to 12 of September, at the picturesque beach area, near the Peter-and-Paul Fortress. The festival is unique - it has no analogy in the Northern Capital, and in the whole Russia. The program of the festival displays all kinds of short films - the funny animation, short motion pictures, music videos, video art, author's cinema from around the world. Festival offers the long time movie screenings for the general public and concerts by famous bands. Website of the event: http://www.artbereg.ru/

"Oceans" is a new documentary movie from the creator of "The Birds" and "Microcosmos" - Jacques Perrin. The premiere will take place in the cinema "Neva". The movie will be released to open public on September 9. The "Oceans" movie reveals a hidden life of the inhabitants of the ocean bottoms and coasts, but the picture looks simply fantastic. For instance, some examples of the underwater fauna, shown in the movie, were never seen before, and some - never seen so close, as the authors of "Ocean." The French documentalists are following the rule of "entertaining and enlightening". They had created an incredibly colorful epic canvas of the life of the ocean and it's inhabitants, using a very sophisticated technology, but at the same time, the accessible language tells us about such important things as the relationship between man and nature, the interaction between the sea creatures, the history of life on our planet. Besides, "Oceans" get an incredible dignity by it's music. A prominent composer Bruno Coulais, who wrote the music for all the previous films of Jacques Perrin, has created a real ocean symphony, perfectly transmitting and atmosphere of the film, and the mood of its main characters for this movie.