The first ceremony of the Russian Internet Movie Awards “Georges” took place on March, 13, 2007 in a Moscow club Bilingua. At that time it was called a LiveJournal Movie Awards “Georges 2007” of Georges Méliès, because it had not left the boundaries of the LiveJournal.
At the ceremony viewers for the first time had the opportunity to communicate directly with those they had voted for. The director Mikhail Khleborodov presented the second part of the Paragraph 78 movie, and the representatives of the Carmen Video company and Alternative cinema club Yan Levchenko and Dmitry Zimin shared the plans on producing new art-house films on DVD with the audience.
The presence of a Johnny Depp’s friend — a musician and founder of The Kids band Bill Hanti — was a big surprise. Depp and Hanti played together in “The Kids” in the beginning of the eighties, and they are still friends and sometimes perform together. During that year Bill lived in Moscow and was even going to work as a drummer in the Diskoteka Avariya band. Bill informed that he had connected with his friend Johnny two days before the ceremony, and Johnny knew about his victory in Russia and was very touched and grateful to the Russian viewers. Hanti promised to pass the matryoshka to Depp, and he kept his word.
The organizers got in touch with all the winners — and those who were absent on various reasons at the ceremony somehow and nevertheless commented on their victory. Meryl Streep’s agents sent their written affirmations that they would definitely pass the prize to the actress. Chulpan Khamatova, who was busy filming in Saint-Petersburg, sent the promise that next year she would do everything possible to be among winners again. “We are very glad the viewers were so touched by our movie,” said Olga Vasilyeva, the director of the Pavel Lungin’s studio and the producer of The Island movie, “And we hope the new project ‘Violence’ will be evaluated as highly as this one.” And the manager of the advertisement department of the Central Partnership company Anna Zayarina thanked everyone who had watched Paris, I Love You and made the non-commercial film almost to a blockbuster by the box-office.