Demutskii, Daniil Porfirevich

Born July 4 (16), 1893, in the village of Okhmatovo, now in Cherkassy Oblast; died May 7, 1954, in Kiev. Soviet cameraman. Honored Art Worker of the Uzbek SSR (1944) and the Ukrainian SSR (1954).

Demutskii graduated from the department of law of the University of Kiev in 1917. He was also a photographer and his works were awarded the gold medal at the Paris International Exhibition of Applied Arts in 1925. In 1925 he directed a photography shop at the All-Ukrainian Administration of Photography and Cinematography in Kiev, then became a cameraman at the Kiev Film Studio. His film Two Days (1927) won him recognition. He collaborated with A. P. Dovzhenko on a series of films: Arsenal (1929), The Earth (1930), and Ivan (1932, with the cameramen Iu. I. Ekel’chik and M. M. Glider). At the Tashkent Film Studio during the Great Patriotic War (1941-45) he filmed Nasreddin in Bukhara (1943) and Takhir and Zukhra (1945). In 1947 at the same studio he shot The Adventures of Nasreddin. Returning to the Kiev Film Studio, he shot Feat of the Agent (1947) and Taras Shevchenko (1951, with I. I. Shekker and A. N. Kol’tsatyi). His film In Peacetime (1951) received an award at the Sixth International Film Festival in Karlovy-Vary (1951) for the best film photography. He was awarded the State Prize of the USSR in 1952.