KVN

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For other uses, see KVN-49.

KVN (Russian: КВН, an abbreviation of Russian: Клуб Весёлых и Находчивых, Klub Vesyolykh i Nakhodchivykh", "Club of the Fun and Ingenious Ones") is a Russian humor TV show where teams (usually teams of students) compete by giving funny answers to questions, improvisations, prepared sketches. The program has been aired by Channel One since November 8th 1961. Eleven years later, in 1972, when a few programs were being broadcast live, Soviet censors found the students' impromptu jokes offensively anti-Soviet and banned the KVN for fourteen years. The show was revived during the Perestroika era, in 1986, with Alexander Maslyakov as its host. It is one of the longest-running programs on Russian TV. It also has its own holiday on November 8th, the birthday of the game, which KVN players celebrate every year since it was announced and widely celebrated for the first time in 2001.

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[edit] KVN as a game

The game of KVN is a turn-based task-based team competition in front of live audience judged by panel of judges. Typically, each team is asked to complete 4-5 assignments such as:

  • Greeting (Privetstviye) - witty introduction of the team, humorous greeting to the jury and spectators.
  • Warm-up (Razminka) - rapid exchange of funny questions and improvised answers, sometimes played against the audience, jury and/or the host.
  • Musical Competition (Muzykal'nyy Konkurs or Muzykalka) - a competition in which the competing teams show musicals sketches and numbers involving singing, playing musical instruments and dancing. Sometimes an alternate shorter version called Contest of One Song is played. In this competition the players must use only one melody throughout the competition.
  • STEM - "students variety miniature" (Studencheskiy Teatr Estradnoy Miniatyury, Russian: Студенческий Театр Эстрадной Миниатюры) a contest in which only three performers from a team are allowed be on stage simultaneously.
  • Captains contest (Kapitanskiy Konkurs) - individual competition between the team captains.
  • Homework (Domashnee Zadanie) Домашнее Задание - comedy theater sketches on a given topic, sometimes a Musical Homework is played when there is no Musical Competition.
  • BRIZ - named after the Bureau of Rationalization and Invention. In this contest the teams need to present something such as an invention, a brief historical survey, movies, photo-albums or any type of new idea. It is also called a literature contest because it mainly consists of textual jokes.
  • News Contest (Konkurs Novostey) - similar to the BRIZ, but focuses on strange and funny "news".
  • Biathlon (Biatlon) - a contest in which a representative of each team "shoots" two or more jokes at the audience. The jury decides who leaves the "shooting range" until only two contestants remain and the jury picks one winner who gets 1 point. On one occasion, though, the jury couldn't decide on a winner (in the second Quarterfinal of the 2007 Major League) and both teams were awarded 0.9 points each.
  • Freestyle - a more modern and free version of the Greeting in which the teams have no restrictions of genre.
  • Cinema Contest (Kino-Konkurs) - a contest which involves making a movie, making a clip to a song, making a clip consisting of different video and audio pieces or dubbing a well-known movie.

Sometimes other contests are played, but they are very rare.

A panel of judges, usually well-known celebrities, actors and writers, evaluates performances on wit, humor, production values and spectators reaction and declares a winner by awarding points to the teams. In the Premier-League the jury consists only of famous KVN players.

[edit] KVN as a competition

Groups of KVN teams are organized into several Leagues, where they compete annually for the League Champion title. KVN is so popular that there are literally hundreds of Leagues around the globe. To organize the movement, the KVN Union created a (Russian)structure of regional and multi-regional arrangements of Leagues. Games of 2 Leagues are regularly broadcast on Russian Channel One: the Major League and the Premier-League, other Leagues are broadcast on local channels. Winner of the Major League (Vysshaya Liga Russian: Высшая Лига) is declared the Champion of the Club. There are other KVN competitions outside the Leagues: the KVN Festival (KiViN) is held in Sochi every January and attracts hundreds of teams from around the world, this is where teams are arranged into Leagues for the Season, the Musical Festival which is called "Singing KiViN" or Hollering KiVin (Golosyaschiy KiViN, Russian: Голосящий КиВиН) is held every July in Jurmala, Latvia where teams are competing to win KiViNs, which are also very prestigious prizes, the Summer Cup or Supercup is played usually in August every year in a different place, usually in Sochi and only Major League Champions are allowed to compete (with two exceptions, when in 2003 a unique team comprising of famous KVN players competed (and also won) and 2007, when a Finalist was invited), another game is held every year in November to celebrate KVN's birthday and is called the Specproject (pronounced "Spetsproyekt"). Many places in the CIS have Leagues independent from KVN Union and conduct their own competitions, the same is said about KVN outside the CIS which has no connection to KVN Union.

[edit] KVN as a social phenomenon

KVN's reach is impressive. According to the official site of KVN Union:

  • over 5 million live spectators annually watch show
  • more than 40,000 participants organized into
  • more than 3,000 regularly competing teams from
  • more than 100 cities play game of KVN.

For more than 20 years TV broadcasts of KVN games receive the highest ratings in Russia. The popularity of the game is so high that even politicians use it as an opportunity to gain extra points, Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev attended games played before the elections. The game of KVN helps in interstate relationships. The CIS - Israel game broadcast on September 19, 1992 helped in warming up relationships between two countries. KVN became part of the culture - it can be illustrated by the fact that it became game of choice in Russian-speaking communities around the globe.

Also, the president of the club, Alexander Maslyakov, received one of the highest (if not the highest) award from Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, for hosting the game for the long time of 45 years.

[edit] KVN around the world

Since Perestroika opened Russian borders for emigrants, KVN reached Israel, Germany, Australia, Portugal, and the United States. Many countries created their own teams, leagues and competitions. In 1992 the Israel team tested the waters playing against the CIS team. The game was an unquestionable success and more international games on a highest level followed: the CIS team visited Israel, Germany and USA. The culmination was in 1994 with the First KVN World Festival in Israel with 4 teams (USA, Israel, CIS and Germany). This event attracted a new generation of players to KVN. Currently, the American League includes more than 30 teams from different universities, including such prominent ones as Harvard, Berkeley and New York University (NYU) (the very first League Champion). KVN Israel is comprised from two Leagues with 16 teams from different towns. The German League has over 25 teams and calls its competitions European KVN Championships, because of the teams from France, the Netherlands and Greece playing there.

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