Macheret, Aleksandr Veniaminovich

Born Dec. 15 (27), 1896, in Baku. Soviet film director and film writer. Honored Art Worker of the RSFSR (1940).

In 1922, Macheret graduated from the department of social sciences at Moscow University. He worked in the Mastfor and Siniaia Bluza theaters. In 1929 he collaborated with V. B. Shklovskii, E. E. Aron, and V. A. Turin on the scenario for the film Turksib. The first film he directed was Deeds and Men (1932), about the Dneprostroi shock brigades. He produced the films The Private Life of Peter Vinogradov (1935), The Motherland Calls (1936), The Mistake of Engineer Kochin (1939), I Am a Black Sea Sailor (1944), and the experimental color film Film Novellas in Color (1941; Heaven and Hell, after P. Merimee; The Swineherd, after H. C. Andersen). Macheret wrote almost all the scenarios for his films and for a number of films by other directors, such as Flyers (1935). He was art director of the Tashkent Film Studio (1942-43) and of the Sverdlovsk Film Studio (1944). From 1950 to 1955, Macheret was deputy director of the scientific division of the State Film Library of the USSR. Macharet has written many works on film-making.