Lev Kulidzhanov - Biography, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Filmography (Read)

Lev Kulidzhanov - biography, date of birth, place of birth, filmography, clips.
Soviet film director, screenwriter and actor. People's Artist of the RSFSR (1969). People's Artist of the USSR (1976). Hero of Socialist Labor (1984). First Secretary of the Board of the Union of Cinematographers of the USSR (1965-1986), Professor of VGIK (since 1977). In 1970-1995 he led the director's workshop at VGIK, since 1985 - head of the department of directing at VGIK. Born March 19, 1923 in Tbilisi into a family of employees. Father - Kulidzhanov Alexander Nikolaevich, a major party worker, was arrested in November 1937. Disappeared and died under unexplained circumstances. Mother - Kulidzhanova Ekaterina Dmitrievna was also repressed in December 1937 and sent to a forced labor camp Kulidzhanov stayed with his grandmother. His youth was spent in Tbilisi. Young Kulidzhanov early became interested in art, and above all theater. In school amateur performances, he performed in three persons at once - playwright, actor, director. In 1942, Lev Kulidzhanov graduated from school and entered the Tbilisi State University in the evening department, at the same time getting a job as a mechanic at the Tbilisi Tool Factory, which was producing small arms at that time. In his free time, he visits the acting school at the State Film Industry of Georgia. At this time, he met his friend's sister, a first-year student at the screenwriting department of VGIK, who did not go to evacuate with the institute in Alma-Ata, but remained with relatives in Tbilisi. The student's stories and her passion for cinema made a deafening impression on Kulidzhanov. He decides to enter the directing department. In the fall of 1943, VGIK returned from evacuation to Moscow. The student left for Moscow, promising Kulidzhanov to send all the information on admission to the directing department. During this difficult and hungry time, Kulidzhanov fell ill with pneumonia, then he was diagnosed with the onset of focal pulmonary tuberculosis. He left the factory. At the next commission in the military registration and enlistment office, he was found unfit for military service. By the summer of 1944, thanks to the combined efforts of relatives, it was possible to stop the process, the foci were healed. The student fulfilled her promise - she sent the conditions of admission to the directing department. Kulidzhanov collected all the information, wrote an application and work for a creative competition and sent everything to Moscow to the admissions committee. Graduated from VGIK (workshop of S.A. Gerasimov) in 1955. At the same time he made his debut with the short film "Ladies" (together with GB Oganisyan, based on the story of AP Chekhov). Then, together with Ya.A. Segel shot two films - "It began like this" (1956) about the life of the first virgin lands and "The house in which I live" (1957, Kulidzhanov also played one of the roles), tracing the pre-war and post-war fates of the inhabitants of one Moscow courtyard. Already in these works, Kulidzhanov's interest was manifested not only in modernity, invariably interconnected social and personal events, but also in the way of life, the life of ordinary people, their mental anxieties and hopes, ordinary human feelings. This happily coincided with the "thaw" that began in the mid-1950s. The return to the screen of such a close and understandable person in terms of his experiences, who is a unique individuality regardless of his position in society, maximally corresponded to Kulidzhanov's aspirations. Having already continued his independent directorial activity, he achieved in The Father's House (1959) and, above all, in his undoubtedly best film When the Trees Were Big (1961), a rare soulfulness, lyricism, sincerity, warmth, humanity intonation in the story about those who are usually called "little people". Even such a socially marginal person as the drunkard Kuzma Iordanov in a convincing performance by Yu.V. Nikulina, or the meek girl Natasha, who is ready to happily take him for her father (the surprisingly bright and pure heroine of I.I.Gulaya seems to inherit the most trusting and defenseless female characters of Dostoevsky), deserve true sympathy and love. Therefore, the director's subsequent appeal to the world of Dostoevsky can be considered to some extent natural, although his film adaptation of Crime and Punishment (1970, State Prize of the RSFSR, 1971) surprised by unexpected cinematic expressionism, sometimes harshness and sharpness of the pictorial series. The craving for external expressiveness and sometimes paradoxicality of comparisons based on real events of history and the captured chronicle of the century led Kulidzhanov (despite his public and party posts) to complications when working on the documentary film "Starry Minute" (1972, issue 1975) about the world's first flight Yuri Gagarin into space. And the grandiose project "XX century" in the mid-1980s was carried out by the director only partially, for which, in turn, Unfortunately, the seemingly acceptable desire of Kulidzhanov to humanize and dramatize the images of political leaders - Lenin in the Blue Notebook (1964, after E.G. Kazakevich) and Karl Marx in the television series Karl Marx. Young years ”(1980, Lenin Prize, 1982) - turned into a semi-success in artistic terms, but from an ideological point of view, the director was still forced to make compromises and concessions, inevitably ennobling and idealizing these key historical figures.
Kulidzhanov's two last films - "It's not scary to die" (1991) and "Forget-me-nots" (1994) - signify a fundamental return for this director to himself, to his favorite style of the 1950s, trusting in relation to the individual fates of ordinary people, only more dramatized, overlooking the destructive breaks of the Stalinist era. But in the director's approach to the events of the past, there is not a grain of speculation on previously forbidden topics, since he recalls what he himself could have been a direct witness to. However, it should be noted that with age, Kulidzhanov nevertheless lost the emancipation, naturalness and clarity of the director's writing - and these tapes acquired an annoying straining and ponderousness. He died on February 17, 2002 in Moscow. He was buried at the Kuntsevo cemetery of the capital (plot number 10). Gruvemuvestart From the memoirs of Lev Kulidzhanov based on the book by Natalia Fokina “Lev Kulidzhanov. Comprehension of the profession ":
In 1944 I decided to go to enter the State Electoral Commission. My grandmother, Tamara Nikolaevna, collected me. She was aware of all my preparatory affairs, because I rehearsed at home what I was supposed to read in the entrance exams - an excerpt from Pushkin's The Queen of Spades. My grandmother was frightened every time when I exclaimed for Herman: "Old woman!" We lived in poverty. My grandmother bought me warm trousers and knitted a coarse wool sweater. I also had some kind of jacket and soldier's shoes. She equipped me with a bed-blanket, a mattress and a pillow. I left in trousers made of denim, which my named grandfather, a military man, gave me (then, even before his illness, he served in the army). Now I know what denim is, and then I could not even determine which side was the wrong side and which was the "face", of course, I was mistaken, and the local tailor sewed jeans for me inside out. My grandmother also bought me half a bag of apples to sell. For some reason it was believed that in Moscow I could sell them and thus earn myself money for the first time. But my commerce has burst - nobody wanted to buy apples and, in the end, they rotted ... The creative activity of L.A. Kulidzhanova throughout his life was actively combined with great administrative and social work. From 1963 to 1964, he headed the main department of artistic cinematography at the USSR State Cinema Committee. In 1964 he became the chairman of the Organizing Committee of the Union of Cinematographers of the USSR. In 1965, at the 1st Congress of Cinematographers, he was elected First Secretary of the Board of the Union and worked in this post for over 20 years. Of course, one could reproach him for the fact that he did not vigorously intercede for his colleagues, who fell out of favor. At least for the same Sergei Paradzhanov, who served a term twice during the Kulidzhanov secretariat. In contrast to the violent temperament of the previous head of the film union, Ivan Pyriev, the quiet Kulidzhanov was called "the sleeping lion." He got the most difficult years of leadership of the union, when he really could do very little for Muratova, Tarkovsky, German or others who did not fit into the establishment. But he did what he could, and it was not his style to simulate activity, and in any case, he never promised what he could not fulfill. In the memory of colleagues, he remained not only as a director, but also as a kind angel of filmmakers - quietly helping with deeds and advice, saving films, preserving Eisenstein's archive. The Museum of Cinema owes its appearance to Kulidzhanov, thanks to his efforts the Cinema Center arose.

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Author: Jane Watson