Georgii Tasin

Tasin, Georgii Nikolaevich

 

Born Mar. 10 (22), 1895, in Shumiachi, in what is now Smolensk Oblast; died May 6, 1956, in Kiev. Soviet motion-picture director and screenwriter. Member of the CPSU from 1921.

Tasin graduated from the faculty of law of the Leningrad Institute of Psychoneurology. In 1920 he became head of the Kiev Okrug Photography Committee; he was later director of the Yalta and Odessa motion-picture studios and of the All-Ukrainian Administrative Board of Film Photography.

Tasin wrote the screenplays for the propaganda films Heroes and Martyrs of the Paris Commune (1921) and Flowers on the Rocks (1922) and for the film A Specter Is Haunting Europe (1923). He directed the films Warrant for Arrest (1927), Jimmie Higgins (1928, adapted from U. Sinclair’s novel), Night Coachman (1929), and Nazar Stodolia (1937, adapted from T. G. Shevchenko’s work), the historical film Karmeliuk (1939), and the lyric comedy Daughter of a Sailor (1942).

After the Great Patriotic War (1941–45), Tasin did documentary films. He received the State Prize of the USSR in 1948, the Order of the Badge of Honor, and a medal.