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

He 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

  • 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 Gargarin's space flight
  • Tocsin of Peace (1963)
  • Qunetra Ruins Accused (1974)

References

  1. ↑ Peter Rollberg (2009). Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Cinema. US: Rowman / Littlefield. pp. 362–364. ISBN 978-0-8108-6072-8.
  2. 1 2 Soviet Calendar 1917–1947, Foreign Publishing House, Moscow 1947
  3. ↑ "Ilya Kopalin". IMDb.
  4. ↑ "Kinoglaz (1924)". BFI. Archived from the original on October 13, 2016.
  5. ↑ Sergei Yutkevich. Film Encyclopedic Dictionary (1987) p. 209.
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