Larisa Shepitko

Larisa Shepitko
Born	(1938-01-06)6 January 1938 Artemovsk, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union
Died	2 July 1979(1979-07-02) (aged 41) Kalinin Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Resting place	Kuntsevo Cemetery, Moscow
Occupation	Film director, screenwriter, actress
Years active	1956–1979
Notable work	The Ascent (1976)
Spouse(s)	Elem Klimov ​ (m. 1963)​
Children	1
Awards	USSR State Prize (1979) Golden Bear (1977)

Larisa Efimovna Shepitko (Russian: Лариса Ефимовна Шепитько; Ukrainian: Лариса Юхимівна Шепітько; 6 January 1938 – 2 July 1979) was a Ukrainian Soviet film director, screenwriter and actress. Larisa Shepitko is considered one of the best female directors of all time, and her film The Ascent was the second film directed by a woman to win a Golden Bear, and the second film directed by a woman to win a top award at a major European film festival (Cannes, Venice, Berlin).

Early life and education[]

Shepitko was born in Artemovsk, a town in Eastern Ukraine now known as Bakhmut. One of three children, she was raised by her mother, a schoolteacher. Her father, a Persian military officer, divorced Shepitko's mother and abandoned his family when Larisa was very young. She recalled, "My father fought all through the war. To me, the war was one of the most powerful early impressions. I remember the feeling of life upset, the family separated. I remember hunger and how our mother and us, the three children, were evacuated. The impression of a global calamity certainly left an indelible mark in my child's mind."^[1] Because of this, her work often deals with loneliness and isolation.

In 1954, she graduated high school in Lviv. Shepitko moved to Moscow when she was sixteen, entering the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography as a student of Alexander Dovzhenko. She was a student of Dovzhenko's for 18 months until he died in 1956. She felt a kinship between their shared heritage and social realist imagery. She also adopted his motto, "Make every film as if it's your last."

Shepitko graduated from VGIK in 1963 with her prize winning diploma film Heat, or Znoy, made when she was 22 years old. Kemel, a recent school graduate, travels into an isolated part of the steppes to work in a small communal farm camp in Central Asia during the mid-1950s. The film was influenced by a short story, "", by Chingiz Aitmatov. Her film showed Dovzhenko's impression, both in its parched setting and its naturalistic style. During the editing phase of the film, Shepitko was helped by Elem Klimov who also was a student at VGIK at that time. In 1963, they married and their one child, Anton, was born in 1973. During the filming of Heat, Shepitko contracted Hepatis A and oftentimes she would direct portions of the film from a stretcher. Temperatures on locations could reach upwards of 50 degrees Celsius which caused the film to melt inside of the camera numerous times.^[2] Heat won the Symposium Grand Prix ex aequo at the Karlovy Vary IFF in 1964^[3] and an award at the All-Union Film Festival in Leningrad.^[4]

Film career[]

Censorship[]

• Being a filmmaker during the Soviet regime was a difficult task. Many times the communist government would censor films that they did not approve of. This was the case for three of Shepitko's early films Wings, The Homeland of Electricity, and You and Me. Wings was released to a limited audience however it was later banned, The Homeland of Electricity never was shown in theaters, and You and Me was dropped and replaced by the release of the Venice Film Festival by the Soviet government. She began working on the production of the film Belorussian Station in 1971 and planned to change the optimistic tone of the original tale to a more tragic one. As new got out of these plans, Mosfilm removed her from production and replaced her with a "less controversial director".^[5]
• Censorship during this time didn't have a clear format to follow. Films were approved solely on which government official saw the film first. Elm Klimov explained that The Ascent, Shepitko's most popular film was only released in theaters because during its screening Pyetr Masherov, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Belorussia accordingly, "wiped away his tears and broke the crowd's stunned silence by speaking for forty minutes on the importance of the film".^[6] Masherov himself was a war veteran of the Belorussian partisan movement and related closely to what the film depicted. Within several days of the screening, The Ascent was officially accepted without any changes.

Films[]

• Wings (Krylya, 1966) – Shepitko's first post-institute film Wings concerns a much-decorated female fighter pilot of World War II. The pilot, now principal of a vocational college, is out of touch with her daughter and the new generation. She has so internalized the military ideas of service and obedience that she cannot adjust to life during peacetime. Shepitko brings to light the inner life of a middle-aged woman who must reconcile her past with her present reality. She expresses this by contrasting her character's repression, marked by claustrophobic interiors and tight compositions, with heavenly, expansive shots of sky and clouds, representing the freedom of her flying days. Actress Maya Bulgakova inhabits this stern but reasonable woman with empathy and humor. The film aroused considerable Soviet press controversy at the time, as films were not meant to depict conflicts between children and parents (Vronskaya 1972, p. 39). It started a public debate by acknowledging a generation gap and for painting a war hero as a forgotten, lost soul.
• Beginnings of an Unknown Era (Nachalo nevedomogo veka, 1967) – In 1967, she shot the second of the three episodes in this portmanteau film, made to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution. Shepitko's episode, The Homeland of Electricity (Rodina elektrichestva), follows a young engineer who brings electric power to an impoverished village. The film as a whole was judged by the authorities to show the Bolsheviks in an unflattering light, and was left unreleased. Two of the episodes, including The Homeland of Electricity, were found and shown publicly for the first time in 1987, but the film in its complete original form is believed lost.^[7]
• In the 13th Hour of the Night (V trinadtsatom chasu nochi, 1969) – In 1969, she shot her first color film, a musical-fantasy film titled In the 13th hour of the night, a New Year's revue starring Vladimir Basov, Georgy Vitsin, Zinovy Gerdt, Spartak Mishulin and Anatoly Papanov.
• You and Me (Ty i ya, 1971) – Shepitko's third film follows the lives of two male surgeons struggling with different notions of fulfillment. It is both a character study and a critique of consumerism. This was her second and last film in color. It was favorably received at the Venice Film Festival.
• The Ascent (Voskhozhdenie, 1977) – her last completed film and the one which received the most attention in the West. The actors Boris Plotnikov and Vladimir Gostyukhin gained their first major roles in the film. Adapted from a novel by Vasili Bykov, Shepitko returns to the sufferings of World War II, chronicling the trials and tribulations of a group of pro-Soviet partisans in Belarus in the bleak winter of 1942. Two of the partisans, Sotnikov and Rybak, are captured by the Wehrmacht and then interrogated by a local collaborator, played by Anatoly Solonitsyn, before four of them are executed in public. This depiction of the martyrdom of the Soviets owes much to Christian iconography. The Ascent won the Golden Bear at the 27th Berlin International Film Festival in 1977.^[8] It was also the official submission of the Soviet Union for the Best Foreign Language Film of the 50th Academy Awards in 1978, and it was included in "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die" by .
  • Shepitko wanted to film to adhere to the authenticity of what Soviet soldiers would have experienced during World War II. The cast derived of no-named actors whose backgrounds fit similar to how she wanted their characters to portray. The film was shot in Murom during the severe winters of Russia where temperatures reached 40 degrees below zero. Shepitko refuse any special treatment and only wore clothing that the cast wore to embody the suffering that they went through.^[9]

Shepitko's growing international reputation led to an invitation to serve on the jury at the 28th Berlin International Film Festival in 1978.^[10]

Death[]

Shepitko died in a car crash on a highway near the city of Tver with four members of her shooting team in 1979 while scouting locations for her planned adaptation of the novel Farewell to Matyora by Valentin Rasputin. Andrei Tarkovsky, a fellow filmmaker and friend of Shepitko, wrote in his journal about the event after attending her funeral, "... A car accident. All killed instantly. So suddenly, that not one of them had adrenaline in the blood. It seems that the driver fell asleep at the wheel. It was early morning. Between Ostachkovo and Kalinin".^[11] Her husband, the director Elem Klimov, finished the work under the title Farewell and also made a 25-minute tribute entitled Larisa (1980).^[12]

Farewell is about a small village on a beautiful island threatened with flooding. The film follows the inhabitants and their farewell to their homeland. "Critics maintained that the final product lacked Shepitko’s unique personal vision, obviously a point of view that could never be replicated". Composer Alfred Schnittke dedicated his String Quartet No. 2 (1981) to Shepitko's memory.

See also[]

• List of female directors
• Women's cinema

References[]

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
• Michael Koresky, Eclipse Series 11: Larisa Shepitko, The Criterion Collection, 2008
• Peter Wilshire, A Harrowing Exploration of War and the Meaning of Human Existence: The Ascent (Voskhozhdeniye, Larisa Shepitko, 1977), Off Screen, Volume 20, Issue 3/March 2016

External links[]

• Larisa Shepitko at IMDb
• Guardian review of a Retrospective Screening of Her Work
• Film essay on Wings and The Ascent