Ilya Petrovich Kopalin (Russian: Илья́ Петро́вич Копа́лин; 1900–1976) was a Soviet film director remembered for his documentaries. His most famous footage is that of Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference and that of Yuri Gagarin's space flight.[1]
Life
editHe was born the son of a peasant[2] on 2 August 1900 in the village of Pavlovskaya, Zvenigorod on the outskirts of Moscow.[3] In his youth he worked in a factory in Moscow. After October 1917 he trained first as a land surveyor then as a pilot. A chance meeting with Dziga Vertov led him instantly into an interest in the cinema. Aged 24 he went to work for Vertov as a camera-man, working on films such as Kinoglaz,[4] but later would work independently. His early films look at country life and agriculture in the newly created USSR.[2]
His work gained him six Stalin Prizes and the Order of Lenin. He died in Moscow on 12 June 1976.[5]
Filmography
edit- Moscow (1927)
- For the Harvest (1929)
- Fifteen Years of Soviet Cinematography (1933)
- Engineers of the Human Soul (1934) – a documentary recording the First Congress of Soviet Writers
- Abyssinia (1935)
- China's Rebuff (1937)
- Ma Dunae (On the Danube) (1940) – Stalin Prize 1941
- Rout of the German Troops at Moscow (1941)
- Stalin's Speech of November 6, 1942 (1943)
- Moscow Strikes Back (1942) – Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature
- Crimea Conference (1945)
- Liberated Czechoslovakia (1945)
- Victory Day Country (1948)
- New Albania (1949)
- Man Conquers Nature (1950)
- Albania (1953)
- Great Farewell (1953)
- For Peace and Friendship (1954)
- Songs over the Vistula (1955)
- Festival Melody (1955)
- Warsaw Meeting (1956)
- Lulz Shippers (1959)
- Destiny of a Great City (1961)
- First Flight to the Stars (1961) – a chronicle of Yuri Gagarin's space flight
- Tocsin of Peace (1963)
- Qunetra Ruins Accused (1974)
References
edit- ^ Peter Rollberg (2009). Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Cinema. US: Rowman / Littlefield. pp. 362–364. ISBN 978-0-8108-6072-8.
- ^ a b Soviet Calendar 1917–1947, Foreign Publishing House, Moscow 1947
- ^ "Ilya Kopalin". IMDb.
- ^ "Kinoglaz (1924)". BFI. Archived from the original on October 13, 2016.
- ^ Sergei Yutkevich. Film Encyclopedic Dictionary (1987) p. 209.
External links
edit- Ilya Kopalin at IMDb
- Ilya Kopalin at the British Film Institute[better source needed]
- (in Russian) Разгром немецких войск под Москвой (Moscow Strikes Back) (1942) on YouTube – Duration: 1:06:21
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