Kulidzhanov, Lev

Born Mar. 19, 1924, in Tbilisi. Soviet motion-picture director; People’s Artist of the RSFSR (1969). Member of the CPSU since 1962.

Kulidzhanov graduated from the directing department of the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography in 1955 (studio of S. A. Gerasimov). He and motion-picture director la. A. Segel’ produced It Began Thus (1956) and The House Where I Live (1957). Kulidzhanov’s next films were The House Where She Was Born (1959) and When Trees Were Tall (1962). His motion pictures are marked by lyricism, extreme authenticity, gentle humor, and the characters’ moral purity. A special place in his career belongs to Blue Notebook (1964), a motion picture about V. I. Lenin. In 1970, Kulidzhanov directed a film version of Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment.

Kulidzhanov was chairman of the organizing committee of the Cinematographers Union of the USSR (1964-65); in 1965 he became the first secretary of the board of the Cinematographers Union of the USSR. He was elected a member of the Central Auditing Committee of the CPSU at the Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth congresses of the CPSU. He was a deputy to the seventh and eighth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Kulidzhanov received the State Prize of the RSFSR (1971) and has been awarded the Order of Lenin and a medal.