For two nights last week, the AMC Orleans 8 theater was transformed into a hotbed of Russian activity and cultural life.

Because the Northeast is home to a sizable Russian population -- and presumably folks of all ethnicities enjoy movies -- that doesn't much seem out of the ordinary.

But on those nights, the eight-screen multiplex featured cinematic attractions specifically geared toward local members of the Slavic community.

On Wednesday, Nov. 1 and Thursday, Nov. 2, the Philadelphia movie theater hosted screenings of two films created by native Russian directors.

A delegation of Russian film industry representatives brought the two films to Philly last week after spending the previous fortnight in the Big Apple showcasing their wares at the New York Festival of Russian Films.

That event is an annual weeklong celebration of cinema created solely by Russian filmmakers. For the first time this year, the two best pictures from that show were caravaned to Philadelphia for what members of the sponsoring agency -- Pennsylvania-Russian Business Council, a type of chamber of commerce organization that works with Russians in America and abroad to develop business opportunities -- hope will become an annual event.

"We're hoping to grow this into a major Russian cultural event in this region," said PRBC president Val Kogan.

For its inaugural two-day festival, PRBC screened only the opening and closing films shown at the New York event: Alexander Proshkin's Captain's Daughter and His Wife's Diary by Alexei Uchitel respectively. "We expect to have more films next year and a screening in Center City," noted Kogan.

That move presumably will be made to attract larger crowds to next year's event. That's not to say that hosting the films in the Northeast was a bad move.

According to Kogan, the film festival hosted capacity crowds at the movie theater both nights; screening of His Wife's Diary on the second evening was before a sold-out audience.

The expansion of the festival, which following its midweek stop in Philadelphia traveled to Washington, D.C., over the weekend, is primarily due to two factors: The slow, but steady homogenization of global culture; and the seeming commitment of Russian government to reinvent the nation's economy.

Much of that work can be seen through the looking glass of Russian motion pictures.

In recent years, Russia has struggled to reverse its ailing economy in the wake of the collapse of communism.

That economic downturn had caused the rate at which Russian feature films are produced to drop from 100 to about 30 per year.

One hundred films is nowhere near on par with the Hollywood movie-making machine that constantly turns out new products, but can be considered a respectable number for a country with a meager film industry. Both directors at last week's festival -- Uchitel and Proshkin, who are considered celebrities in their homeland -- each had not completed films in more than four years prior to their current releases, a stark example of the decline in Russian film productions.

The difficulty, the directors explained, is finding money to make movies.

When the Russian government recently dismantled Goskino, the state's Committee for Cinematography, concern was raised among filmmakers about the status of their craft.

Thankfully, both Uchitel and Proshkin note, Goskino has become a non-issue as the government seemingly has shown more willingness to invest in films.

The Captain's Daughter, for example, was made with a budget that approached 10 million U.S. dollars, he said through an interpreter.

The opus focuses on the tumult surrounding the life and love of young Masha Mironova and Petr Grinev during the 18th century Pugachevs rebellion.

It is based on two stories -- The Captain's Daughter and The History Pugachev -- by Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837), widely considered the founder of classical Russian poetry.

Uchitel's work behind the lens, meanwhile, examines the latter of years of exiled Russian novelist Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin.

His Wife's Diary explores the family trials of Bunin, winner of the 1933 Nobel Prize for Literature, in the 1930s and '40s after being banished to France.

Both films are examples of contemporary Russian cinema with one major exception: each lacks a slick, commercial feel that the directors contend is prominent in Russian film today.

"The state of Russian film in general is commercialization," Proshkin said through a translator. "They tend to copy Hollywood and make expensive films. The best (Russian) filmmakers attempt to make successful films that entertain."

Apparently a big budget, astounding special effects, spectacular stunts and a paper-thin plot aren't all that's important to a film's recognition in Russia.

Uchitel's Diary recently won the award for Best International Film at the National Film Festival in Milan, Italy -- a Hollywood-sponsored event. It also was selected as Russia's entry for consideration as Best International Film at the 2001 Academy Awards ceremony next spring.

And the influx of Russian influence on international cinema may continue. Proshkin and Uchitel -- accompanied to Philadelphia by film industry representatives from their homeland including Dmitry Piorunsky, first deputy chairman of the Russian Filmmakers Union, and Katia Filippova, vice president of the union -- noted that they are in negotiations with some Hollywood honchos to create films there.

For more information about the Pennsylvania- Russian Business Council, contact www.fita.org/prbc.