4 March - Sunday
Oscar Awards Ceremony
International Children's Television and Radio Broadcasting Day
1818 Monument to Kuzma Minin and Prince Pozharsky was unveiled in Moscow
1877 Birthday of the microphone: American Emil Berliner created a microphone
Oscar is the oldest media award in the world and one of the most significant awards in the world cinema. It is awarded annually by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts (Film Academy) at a ceremony that traditionally takes place in late February - early March at the Dolby Theater (formerly known as Kodak) in Los Angeles, USA. The peculiarity of this award is also that unlike most film festivals, "Oscars" are awarded on the basis of the results of the universal vote of the Academy members, and not at the choice of the jury. Candidates for the award are nominated by their colleagues in the film industry, but the winners are determined by the secret ballot of the Film Academy members, who as of 2007 had about 6,000 people divided into 16 guilds. And each guild (by the way, the most numerous of them is acting) votes in its category (actors choose the best actress and actor, scriptwriters - the best screenwriter, etc.). But for some nominations special voting groups are created outside the Film Academy, and all together they vote only for one category - "the best picture". The names of the winners are kept secret until the solemn ceremony of the Oscars.
The history of the prize is from 1929, although it has officially been called "Oscar" since 1939, and was originally called the "Academy Awards", and was conceived by the head of the American MGM film studio Louis B. Maier. He also, two years earlier, became one of the founders of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) along with other film-makers and heads of Hollywood studios. The first award ceremony of this film award was held on May 16, 1929 in Los Angeles at the Roosevelt Hotel. Since then, the rules of delivery, voting and even the list of nominations have been constantly changing. Today, the presentation ceremony is broadcast live in dozens of countries around the world, and until 1953 it was broadcast on the radio. Perhaps the only thing that has remained unchanged since the first days of the Oscar's existence is a gilded statuette, which is the main prize for the winners. It is produced since 1929 and represents a knight with a sword on a reel with a film. Five holes on the base of the coil are the five departments of the Film Academy: producers, screenwriters, directors, actors and technicians. The height of the figurine is 34 cm, weight - 3.85 kg, it is made of gold-plated britain, it is located on a pedestal of black marble. The idea of the statuette belongs to the executive director of the company MGM Cedric Gibbons, her incarnation - the sculptor George Stanley. But the author of the name - "Oscar" - is not known for certain. Initially, the award was awarded in 12 categories, currently the "Oscar" is awarded in 24 main categories: Best Film of the Year, Best Director, Best Male and Female roles, Best Supporting Men and Women, Best Original Screenplay, Best Adaptation Script, Best Music, Best Song, Best Editing, Best Visual Effects, Best Artistic Director, Best Cinematography, Best Sound, Best Costume Design, Best Sonic Editing, Best Make-Up, Best Foreign Language Film, Best Arts a nd documentary short films, animated feature and best short film, best documentary feature film. Only 7 nominations remained unchanged since 1929, and documentary films are nominated for Oscar only since 2001. In addition to the main, Oscars are also awarded in several special nominations.
Soviet and Russian films were nominated for the Oscars many times, received six of our paintings - a documentary film by L. Varlamov and I. Kopalin, "The Defeat of the German Fascist Forces near Moscow" (1942), S. Bondarchuk's epic "War and Peace" "(1968), A. Kurosawa's painting" Dersu Uzala "(co-production of the USSR and Japan, 1975), V. Men'shov's film" Moscow Does not Believe in Tears "(1980), N. Mikhalkov's drama" Burnt by the Sun "(1994) and animation A.Petrov's film "The Old Man and the Sea" (2000). Unfortunately, in recent years Russian films nominated by the country for the Oscar have been defeated before the stage of the contest for the nomination. As the leading domestic filmmakers consider, the problem is not the absence of worthy Russian films, but the difference in the criteria for selecting films for nominees and in some factors influencing the awarding of the award, which have nothing to do with art, for example, political. In general, in recent years, the policy and choice of the prize are increasingly being criticized all over the world. In particular, it is noted that the opinion of the voting members of the Film Academy is far from always impartial. Since the beginning of the voting season, they have been under pressure from film companies in the form of an active advertising campaign of the films of the applicants. Also, specialists note the decreasing level of requirements for nominees, and also the fact that the policy and financial figures of the film rental influence the voices of the members of the Film Academy. Therefore, paintings that should be marked with attention due to artistic merit, are undeservedly forgotten. But, despite the criticism, Oscar is still one of the world's premier film awards, and the Oscars ceremony itself attracts millions of viewers around the world to the TV screens.
March 4, 1877, the American inventor Emil Berliner created a microphone. However, in this story, everything is not so simple. A year before, Alexander Bell also created a microphone, called a liquid (or condenser) transmitter, though. The liquid transmitter was presented at the Philadelphia exhibition dedicated to the centennial of the American Revolution. It was there that he saw Berliner and decided that he could make the device no worse. Berliner was able to purify and amplify the transmitted sounds and invented, thus, a kind of telephone transmitter with a loose contact, which he called a microphone. Thanks to Berliner's improvements, the phone ceased to be just a technical novelty and became an effective means of communication, capable of transmitting sounds over long distances. When Bell learned about the microphone, he began to sue Berliner, but the court unexpectedly took the side of Berliner. Then Bell decided to go the other way - the patent issued to Berliner was bought for 50 thousand dollars, and the inventor himself was accepted into the Bell Telephone Company for permanent salary as the chief specialist in telephone engineering. With time and the development of scientific thought, there was a constant modernization and microphone devices. For example, in the 1920s, the Japanese scientist Yoguchi invented an electret microphone, but according to the principle of action and design, it was not much different from the condenser microphone. Today, without a microphone, it is difficult to imagine many achievements of civilization. After all, the proliferation of multimedia technologies is inextricably linked with the task of transferring large volumes of information, including sound, to considerable distances. From the initial stage of converting voice, music or noise, the quality of the displayed content also depends. Therefore, despite its considerable age, the microphone is still in demand today as a technical invention.