Crowdfunding

Russian businessmen, artists, activists and dreamers are embracing crowdfunding as a way to drum up financial support for projects that cannot attract state funding or loans. The Russian crowdfunding site Planeta has already funneled over R500 million into various projects. Here are some of the projects in Russia and the near abroad that are seeking to pool funds from interested individuals.

Animator Garri Bardin is seeking to raise R7 million ($111,000) for his third crowdfunded film, Bolero 2017. Bardin, who is now 75, is best known for making stop-action animated films about society with very mundane materials, like matches or wire. His film Выкрутасы (“Fioritures”), which received a 1988 Short Film Palme d’Or in Cannes, is about a wire man who is driven insane by the desire to protect himself, turning his entire wire family into a fence.

Bardin previously crowdfunded Three Melodies, in 2013, and Listening to Beethoven, which toured the festivals this year.