Name Aleksei German Role Filmmaker | Children Aleksey German Jr. | |
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Spouse Svetlana Karmalita (m. ?–2013) Parents Yuri German, Tatyana Rittenberg Movies History of the Arkanar Massacre, My Friend Ivan Lapshin, Khrustalyov - My Car!, Trial on the Road, 20 Days Without War Similar People Aleksey German Jr, Svetlana Karmalita, Leonid Yarmolnik, Yuri German, Yuri Tsurilo | ||
Aleksei Yuryevich German (Russian: Алексей Юрьевич Герман; [ɐlʲɪˈksʲej ˈjʉrʲjɪvʲɪt͡ɕ ˈɡʲermən]; 20 July 1938 – 21 February 2013) was a Soviet and Russian filmmaker, most active as a director and screenwriter.
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Biography
German was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg, Russia) in 1938; his father was the writer Yuri German. He studied under Grigori Kozintsev until 1960, and then moved on to working in theatre before joining the Lenfilm studio as an assistant director. He made his directing debut with Sedmoy Sputnik, co-directed with Grigory Aronov in 1967. Over the course of his career, many of his projects met with production difficulties or official opposition; in 50 years, he managed to complete just six feature films, his final film being the science fiction film Hard to Be a God, which debuted at the Rome Film Festival in 2013.
Trial on the Road (1971) is the film that made Alexei German famous. It was banned for fifteen years and was "on the shelves" of the Ministry of Culture of the Soviet Union until its release (1986) during the Gorbachev era. However, the names of all of the crew members who emigrated to the United States (DP Yasha Sklansky (or Yakov Sklyansky), Assistant Director Leo Zisman (or Leonid Zisman) and Production Manager and Assistant Director Leon Weinstein (or Leonid A. Weinstein)) were erased from the credits. The same is true with another "Lenfilm" crew member on German's film (Twenty Days Without War, 1976), Natalia Toreeva, who worked as the Costume Designer in this film, and who also emigrated to the United States in 1977.
In 1987, at the Rotterdam International Film Festival (Netherlands), Alexei German, as a director, received a KNF Award for his three films, Trial on the Road, Twenty Days Without War, and My Friend Ivan Lapshin.
German is survived by his wife, the screenwriter Svetlana Karmalita, and his son Aleksei Alekseivich German, who is also a film director.
Style
Most of German's films are set during the Joseph Stalin era and the Second World War, and they depict the time period in a critical light. His films, shot mostly in black and white or very muted color, have a distinctive "murky" look and are often described as looking "aged." He was known for his obstinacy as a director, for featuring protagonists who could be categorized neither as heroes nor antiheroes, and for casting actors against type.