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

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. ^ a b 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.

External links

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