Lev Kulidzhanov

Lev Aleksandrovich Kulidzhanov (; 19 March 1924 – 17 February 2002) was a Soviet and Armenian film director, screenwriter and professor at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography. He was the head of the Union of Cinematographers of the USSR (1965—1986). People's Artist of the USSR (1976). He directed a total of twelve films between 1955 and 1994. Biography Born on 19 March 1924 (according to other sources including his tomb — on 19 August 1923) in Tiflis, Transcaucasian SFSR. His father Aleksandr Nikolayevich Kulidzhanov (originally Kulidzhanyan) was an Armenian revolutionary who served as a high-ranking Communist Party official. He was arrested during the Great Purge of 1937 and disappeared without a trace. Kulidzhanov's mother Yekaterina Dmitriyevna was either of Russian or of Armenian descent. She was arrested along with her husband and sentenced to five years in the Akmol labor camp in Kazakhstan. She returned home only in 1944. All those years Kulidzhanov spent with his grandmother Tamara Nikolaevna. From 1942 to 1943 he studied at the Tbilisi State University. In 1944 he traveled to Moscow and enrolled in the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography to study film direction under Grigori Kozintsev, but left it in just a year because of the poor living conditions and returned to Tbilisi. In 1948 Kulidzhanov became a VGIK student again, with Sergei Gerasimov and Tamara Makarova as his teachers. He graduated in 1955 and immediately started working at the Gorky Film Studio, releasing his first short film Ladies co-directed with Genrikh Oganisyan. His first success happened with a movie The House I Live In co-directed with Yakov Segel. It became one of the 1957 Soviet box office leaders, reaching the 9th place with 28.9 million viewers. Not only it was the first cinema role of the acclaimed Russian actress Zhanna Bolotova, but Kulidzhanov himself also played one of the characters. It was his only big screen role in the entire career. His next film A Home for Tanya turned to be another success and competed for the Palme d'Or at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival.