Introduction from the Thematic Editors

Cinema as a kind of mass media and as an art form has taken its rightfully significant place in our lives.  However, for psychology, cinema remains a "terra incognita" in many respects. In 1979, famous American psychologist J. Gibson lamented that, despite the impressive development of cinema itself, there is virtually no research in the field of psychology of film. Attempts to outline the ways of fundamental understanding and research of cinema were made in psychology by H. Münsterberg, J. Mitry, and N.I. Zhinkin. Beginning in the 1990s, through the active efforts of cognitive psychologists, psychology of film began to develop as a field of systematic scientific research (D. Bordwell, N. Carroll, J.D. Anderson, C. Plantinga, etc.). It is a well-known fact that S.M. Eisenstein collaborated with L.S. Vygotsky and A.R. Luria. 

We hope that the proposed selection of articles will stimulate the development and advancement of research in the field of psychology of film, as well as coordinate it. A brief overview of the articles presented.

N.G. Voskresenskaya's research is aimed at studying the features of mechanisms for resolving value conflicts through the choice of films and the subjective perception of favorite film characters. The author described the specifics of the realization of the compensatory function of cinema. V.G. Gryazeva-Dobshinskaya, S.Y. Korobova and Y.A. Dmitrieva address the phenomenon of the cult film and present the results of a study of psychological factors of its perception and impact.  In the article by T.A. Kubrak and A.A. Starostina, such a factor of the psychological impact of films as "transportation" - the state of involvement and immersion in the narrative - is presented. The article by M.I. Yanovsky is devoted to the development of a theoretical model of a psychological structure of the virtual world of comedy and the presentation of the results of an empirical study of the impact of a comedy film on viewers.