Elem Klimov - Soviet film director, author of several textbook films

Klimov Elem Germanovich - a famous film director of the Soviet period. The People's Artist of the Russian Federation from 1997, from 1986 to 1988, was the secretary of the Presidium of the USSR Union of Cinema Workers.

Elem Klimov, biography

Born in 1933, July 9 in Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad), in the family of German Stepanovich Klimov, member of the Party Control Committee under the Central Committee of the CPSU. Since 1956, he led the rehabilitation of victims of Stalinist repression. He personally collected more than seventy volumes of cases on innocently convicted. Several hundred people were repressed, and German Stepanovich hoped to fully understand the situation, but his health failed - I had to hand things over to younger enthusiasts.

Mother - Klimova Kaleria Georgievna. Brother - Klimov German Germanovich, screenwriter. Wife - Shepitko Larisa, famous film director. There is a son - Anton Klimov, PR director. The family lived amicably, although it rarely gathered at the same table.

Elem Klimov graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute in 1957 and began working as a design engineer at a Moscow plant. Collaborated with the editors of Central Television. In 1962 he joined the Communist Party. In 1964 he graduated from VGIK as a director and came to work at the Mosfilm film studio.

Carier start

Elem Klimov, whose films are classics of Soviet cinema, shot his first full-length film in 1964. It was the comedy "Welcome, or No Trespassing." The main role is Evgeny Evstigneev. The film made a splash and alerted the party leadership of the country. Klimov’s next picture entitled “The Dentist’s Adventures” was banned and “shelved” for many years. The film appeared on the screen after twenty years, in 1987.

The director’s blue dream was to create a full-length film based on Bulgakov’s work “The Master and Margarita”. Klimov even wrote the script together with his brother German, but they did not give money for the production for ideological reasons, and the project remained on paper.

In the early nineties, a meeting of Russian filmmakers with business representatives took place. Someone raised the issue of financing problems for new film projects. The speaker pointed to Elem Klimov and said that the director could not fulfill his dream in any way and film Bulgakov’s masterpiece. Present millionaires of a new wave expressed a desire to help with money, but Klimov refused, explaining his position by the fact that he did not understand the sources of this money.

Larisa Shepitko

Elem Klimov met his future wife at the institute. Larisa studied at the directing department and was considered the first beauty of VGIK. She acted in films a lot as a student, and one day she met with an older student named Ele, handsome, tall and talented. Soon the young people got married.

Larisa and Elem were the most beautiful matrimonial duet of Soviet cinema, they worked together and helped each other in everything. At some point, Shepitko stepped forward, she received a prestigious award at the Berlin Film Festival for her film entitled "Ascent".

Elem, on the contrary, was experiencing his next failure, his painting "Agony" was banned (she lay in the archive for ten years).

Nevertheless, life continued, the son grew up, scripts were written, new projects were opened. Filming was planned according to Rasputin Valentine’s script “Farewell to Mater”. Shepitko was supposed to shoot the picture.

However, a tragedy occurred, Larisa was in a car accident. The whole crew died with her. The film already begun was completed by Elem Klimov.

Main work

And only after this crazy tragedy did the director find the strength in himself and take off his main picture, entitled "Go and See." The picture was created on the verge of reality, with pain and scream. It turned out to be a real masterpiece, deeply psychological, on a naked nerve, unlike other Soviet films.

The picture was shot on monstrous material - the facts about the genocide of the Belarusian people, the destruction of villages by Hitler's punishers formed the basis. Some episodes filmed by Klimov went beyond the limits of normal human imagination. There were no tears, no compassion, no sympathy, no pity. Only horror, inevitable and chilling blood. Scary film.

In total, the director shot twelve films, for years he had been waiting for his chance, but to no avail. He lived as he should, was indifferent to the world around him, felt disgust for the new values ​​that replaced the Soviet system. Ele Klimov died of cerebral hemorrhage in 2003, October 26. The director was buried at the Troekurovsky cemetery.

Director's work

As mentioned, just Elem Klimov shot 12 films, of which only six came out on the big screen:

• “Go and see” (1985);
• Farewell (1981);
• Agony (1981);
• Larisa (1980);
• "An Evening of Memories" (1972);
• "Sport, sport, sport" (1970);
• "Single Fathers" (1968);
• "Welcome, or No Trespassing" (1964);
• "Look, heaven!" (1962);
• "The Living" (1960);
• "The Dentist's Adventures" (1965);
• "Caution: vulgarity" (1959).