November is one of the awards months in the Russian capital, starting with the Snob magazine “Made in Russia” awards on Nov. 13. Held for the eighth time at the Malaya Bronnaya Theater, the “Made in Russia” prize is awarded to the best thing that has happened in the country in a year in the fields of culture, science, business, and society. Snob’s readers voted online for nominees who had been chosen by an expert committee.
In the nomination “Big Country,” Tatyana and Vladislav Filyov from S7 got an award for their charity campaign “We are Siberia” to restore Siberian forests after last summer’s fires.
Perhaps surprisingly to people who don’t follow online shopping trends, the Business award went to the company Wildberries, a clothing internet store that has the biggest volume of traffic in the world.
In a rare acknowledgement of provincial art, the Theater award went to Oleg Lipovetsky for his “Dead Souls” production in Lesosibirsk of Krasnoyarsk region.
The Cinema award went to Alexander Gorchilin, for his directorial debut Acid (Kislota) about two friends dealing with death, sexuality and the meaning of life.
The sensations of the evening were two awards for the written word. The media award went to human rights project OVD-Info, which fights against political persecutions. In the Literature nomination, Olga Allenova was recognized for her investigative journalism in the book on Beslan school siege.
Together, these two awards signify that it’s been a big year for investigative journalism.
Jagermeister Indie Awards
The next evening, the Jagermeister Indie Awards took place at a nightclub 1930. The annual awards ceremony has become one of the main music events in the country. While there are plenty of other music awards, they mainly cover music that gets airplay on major radio and TV stations. The Jag awards are for music quality.
Indie pop rockers from St. Petersburg, Shortparis, came away with most of the awards: Band of the Year, Single of the Year and Video of the Year. Shortparis shot some of the most provocative videos last year, including Strashno (Scary), which got the award. This might signal a shift from popularity of ubiquitous teenage rap, at least in the music expert community.
The summer music festival with the decidedly non-festive name Bol (“Pain”) was recognized as the event of the year. Petlya Pristrastiya (Noose of Prejudice), a band from Belarus, that plays a mix of mainstream rock and post punk, got the Rock Band of the Year award for their latest album Gul (Noise).
Hip-hop Act of the Year went to maslo chernogo tmina (black caraway oil), a relative newcomer from Kazakhstan, while producer Mirabella Karyanova, who works under monikers Shadowax and Ishome received the best electronic music artist award. Originally from Krasnodar, Karyanova has already been noticed by major labels.
