Pavel Kogan
Directing
Biography
Pavel Kogan was born on July, 9, 1931 in Leningrad. He got two external high school degrees, that of Leningrad State University and GITIS; was employed as dumb performer by Kirov (presently Mariinsky) Opera. Finding himself, by vagaries of fate, in the cinema, he directed more than 35 documentary films. These films include, on the one hand, such as “The band of military tunes” (1968) in partnership with P. Mostovoy, which got the best film award, the Golden Dove, of Leipzig Festival; on the other hand, such as the full-length “Mutiny in Sobibor” (1989) being a revelation to Pavel himself as it was his first encounter with the Jewish subject and the topic of European Jewry’s holocaust, and being the first international Soviet-Dutch project. In 1989, the film was awarded with Joris Ivens prize at the Amsterdam international Festival. For twenty years he was teaching the film directing at Leningrad Institute of Theatre, Music and Cinematography. For over ten years he hosted “Cinema and time” show on Leningrad TV, hence called “Kapler of Leningrad”. In 1992, Pavel fell seriously ill. Medicine in Russia, along with Germany and Israel turned out to be ineffective. Pavel passed away November, 3, 1998. He was buried in Komarovo. Pavel reminisced once about himself:- «I was the third infant of the family. The elder brother went to battlefields to be killed in the first month. During the siege of the city, my sister, a university student, served in the army, in AA defence. Father died from starvation under siege; he was a clockmaker, buried in a mass grave in Piskarievskoye cemetery. Mother died soon after the break-through, in post-war time. At the age of 14, I started working in the evenings making hairpins, knitting fisherman’s nets, botching up crates. Gradually, I finished secondary school, dreaming of entering a department of linguistics, but the tide had been turning already, “With a name like yours [a Jewish name], one has nothing to do here”. It was in 1948. I entered the university for political economy, when it was sought after by no one. But how can one live on the scholarship alone? A certain lass let to know that it was possible to be employed by Kirov Theatre, in a troop of supers, saying, “With a black stocking spread on your face, you will represent a negro boy in “Aida” performance”. My pay was 40 roubles a month. In my infancy, I had been admitted to the cello class. I seem to have been pitch perfect after all, but we had absolutely no money for the instrument, so I changer over to the cornet-a-piston. I learned to play the cornet until happened to break a tooth, yet I kept a passion for brass music for life. While in the Theatre, learnt all at the Opera by heart. There was some aptitude for literature, too. One sketch of mine was published by Boris Polevoy, in the “Yunost’” magazine, he urged me to keep on writing. Whereas at the stage, I did but serve the top hat and gloves to Lemeshev as Lensky. Lucky for me, I was cashiered from the Theatre. After 10 years at that, and again – because of my nationality. Yet it was year 1959. I was walking along Kriukov canal and saw hard-by – and I had been unaware that quite hard-by the Teatre it was – the studio “Lenkinokhronika” (Leningrad documentary). There I forced myself into being the assistant stage manager – “
Known For
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The Limit of Possible
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The Limit of Possible
The plot is based on a conflict that arose at the architectural design institute.
The House is Being Built
Alisa Freyndlikh in a rush — there isn't a single calm, free minute. Rehearsals, discussions of roles with Igor Vladimirov, her daughter Varya's birthday, daytime and evening performances, meetings with the audience...
Alisa Freyndlikh
A film about the history, drama, and glory of Russian ballet abroad. The film is based on interviews with Russian ballerinas Natalia Makarova, Nina Vyrubova, Irina Grzhebina, Irina Vasilyeva, Olga Vershinina-Debasile, and theatrical designers Dmitry Bushen and Alexander Vasiliev.
Russian Ballet Without Russia
This poetic core in youngsters is also touched in Stanukina's less known Your very personal poetry (Свои, совсем особые стихи, 1982), a wonderful film about a poetry class. It is here that one recalls Kogan's admiration of Lyalya's emotional documentary skills. And it is here that one recalls Kosakovsky's depiction of Lyalya as a person of extraordinarily prosperous feelings, sensitive and energetic, childish and female, shrill and quiet. The young poets are marvellously sneaky, respectfully adoring and creatively playing with - maybe even deconstructing - "Aleksandr Sergeevich", Mr. Pushkin, Russia's exclusive trade mark of high culture and literature.
Your Very Personal Poetry
The art of theater is a complex craft. In 19 minutes, you can’t convey everything that is taught over five years. Our film is only a short walk through the Lunacharsky State Institute of Theatre Arts, a cinematic panorama of three directing classes. The classes of M. O. Knebel, A. A. Goncharov, and A. V. Efros.
Classes
Short film in the Hermitage Museum looking at da Vinci's Madonna Litta.
Look at the Face
A look back at the 1969 Ice Hockey World Championships in Stockholm.
Big Hockey
The everyday life of the candy factory. A gray, exhausting life, and a guest lecturer talks about beautiful feelings, about love and courtship. He does not know what it costs to make a box of chocolates that someone will bring to his beloved woman on March 8. It's snowing, covering the streets. Then spring will come, then summer, but still in the smoking room, the workers of the candy factory, in rare moments of rest, will talk about their lives, which are passing.
Summer Is Soon
About life in the village of Verkola, the birthplace of the great Russian writer Fyodor Abramov, to whose memory the painting is dedicated. The northern Arkhangelsk region where the writer Fyodor Abramov grew up. Portraits of the writer's fellow countrymen, residents of the village of Verkola, their lives, work, and daily life.
Give Us This Day
Revolt in Sobibor is a beautifully filmed portrait of four survivors of the uprising in the Sobibór extermination camp in Eastern Poland, close to the Russian border.
Revolt in Sobibor
About the first visit to Russia of Mstislav Rostropovich and Galina Vishnevskaya after 16 years of forced emigration.
Mstislav Rostropovich. The Return
“Like the right and left hand Your soul is close to my soul We are sealed shut, blissfully and warmly, Like the right and left wing…” The life and art of Pavel Kogan and Lyudmila Stanukinas, two famous Leningrad documentary filmmakers, can best be expressed by the Tsvetaeva stanza cited above. They are the main characters of this film, which their student Viktor Kossakovsky shot during Pavel Kogan’s final months. For Lyudmila Stanukinas, Lyalya, as those close to her called her, her husband was her only reason for existence. She was with him until the end and held onto his extinguishing life as much as she could.
Pavel and Lyalya (A Jerusalem Romance)
Using the example of one GITIS course, led by People's Artist of the Republic Professor Maria Osipovna Knebel, the training methods for future theatre directors are demonstrated.
In Directing Classes
Portrait of test pilot Alexander Shcherbakov.
Flight
Cinematic surveillance of people standing in line at Lenin's Mausoleum in Red Square.
Day by Day
Film from the Leningrad Documentary Film Studio.
Proud Humility
Tells about the everyday life of the military music orchestra. The most difficult thing is to play a parade concert or “defile”. A defile is when military musicians play a march in motion, without straying from a clear marching step, or from the rhythm, without violating the strict musical pattern. For a professional, this is not so difficult to do, but how did an orchestra from a generally ordinary military unit manage to do this?
Military Music Orchestra