- Larisa Shepitko
Larisa Efimovna Shepitko ( _ru. Лариса Ефимовна Шепитько;
Artemovsk ,Ukrainian SSR ,6 January 1939 - Kalinin Oblast,2 June 1979 ) was a Soviet Russianfilm director . She went to the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography inMoscow as a student ofAlexander Dovzhenko . She was a student of Dovzhenko's for 18 months until he died in 1956. Shepitko graduated from VGIK in 1963 with her prize winning diploma film "Heat" made when she was 22 years old. It tells the story of a new farming community inCentral Asia during the mid 1950s.Shepitko's next film "Wings" concerns a much-decorated female fighter pilot of
World War II . The pilot, now principal of a vocational college, is on a very different wavelength to her daughter and the new generation. The film aroused considerable press controversy as films were not meant to represent conflicts between children and parents. The film also seemed to be mocking war heroes as well. (Vronskaya, 1972 p 39).Shepitko's third film was "You and I" (1971). This was her only film in colour. Quart (1989, p215) argues that it showed a much stronger Western film making style which might explain its favourable reception at the
Venice Film Festival and its corresponding lack of public exposure in theSoviet Union ."
The Ascent " (1976) was her last film and the one which gained most attention in the West. In this Shepitko returns to the sufferings of World War II. It chronicles the trials and tribulations of a group of partisans inBelarus in the bleak winter of 1942. Two of the partisans are captured by the Nazis and then interrogated by a local collaborator, played byAnatoly Solonitsyn , before being executed in public. This depiction of themartyrdom of the Russians owes much toChristian iconography , reflecting the director's profound understanding of Western pictorial traditions. "The Ascent" wonGolden Bear at the 1977Berlinale .Her growing international reputation led to an invitation to serve on the jury at the
Berlin International Film Festival in 1978. Unfortunately she was unable to complete any other films. Shepitko died in a car crash with 4 members of her shooting team in 1979 making "Farewell to Matyora ." Her husbandElem Klimov , also a film director, finished the work for her.ee also
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List of female directors
*Women's Cinema External links
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* [http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,2763,1386714,00.html Guardian review of a retrospective screening of her work]Bibliography
*Quart, Barbara Koenig. 1988. Women Directors: The Emergence of a New Cinema . New York: Praeger. ISBN 0-275-92962-0, OCLC|17385039.
*Vronskaya, Jeanne. 1972. Young Soviet Film Makers. London: George Allen and Unwin
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