Third international festival of television programmes and films to be held in Volgograd

"Eternal Flame" is the name of an international festival of television programmes and films to be held in Volgograd on May 24-25, RIA Novosti was told in the administration of the Volgograd region, Volga valley.

Applications were sent in by over 40 television studios of Russia and Germany.

The festival will feature plots, films, features and programmes on military patriotic themes. These are the history of the Great Patriotic War against Nazism in 1941-45, the Battle of Stalingrad (Stalingrad was the name of Volgograd before 1961), and the life stories of great military leaders, war veterans, and witnesses of those events.

The first "Eternal Flame" festival was held in Volgograd in 1987. Then it took place held in Odessa (a city on the Black Sea) and Arkhangelsk (northern Russia) and was timed to coincide with the 45th and 50th anniversaries of victory in the Great Patriotic War.

This year the Eternal Flame is devoted to the 60th anniversary of the defeat of German troops outside Stalingrad.