Beliaev, Vasilii
Beliaev, Vasilii Nikolaevich
Born Dec. 27, 1902 (Jan. 9, 1903), in Moscow; died there May 19, 1967. Soviet cameraman and director. Member of the CPSU from 1941.
Beliaev worked on documentary films from 1923 on and from 1927 to 1940 was associated with the Leningrad Newsreel Studio. During the Great Patriotic War he was director of motion-picture units at the front and also worked with partisan detachments. In 1942, Beliaev became a cameraman and director at the Central Studio for Documentary Films. He was a master of the journalistic genre in documentary films. As a director he helped create the full-length documentary films The Mannerheim Line (1941), Sailors of the Black Sea Fleet (1942), The People’s Avengers (1943), New Czechoslovakia (1949), and Our Land (1960), among others. The documentary film Vladimir ll’ich Lenin, which Beliaev both wrote the script for (with E. G. Kriger) and directed (with M. I. Romm), was released in 1949. He won the State Prize of the USSR in 1941,1943,1946,1949, and 1951 and was awarded two orders as well as medals.