Aleksei Saltykov
| Aleksey Saltykov | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Aleksey Aleksandrovich Saltykov May 13, 1934 Moscow |
| Died | April 8, 1993 (aged 58) Moscow |
| Occupation | Film director, screenwriter |
Aleksey Aleksandrovich Saltykov (Russian: Алексей Александрович Салтыков; 13 May 13 1934 – 8 April 1993) was a Soviet and Russian film director and screenwriter. People's Artist of the RSFSR (1980).
Saltykov was born in Moscow to Russian parents. His father Aleksandr Saltykov worked as an engineer at the Moscow Kremlin. With the start of the Great Patriotic War he was sent to the front line and killed near Sevastopol in 1941. His family stayed in Moscow. Aleksey's mother baptized him and his sister shortly before the Battle of Moscow, which they eventually survived. She never married again and raised the children by herself.
At the age of 14 Saltykov had to become a factory worker because of the poor living conditions. He also visited an evening school and at one point decided to join VGIK. In 1961 he finished director's courses led by Sergei Gerasimov. His first feature film My Friend, Kolka! was released the same year, co-directed by Aleksander Mitta. It was seen by 23.8 million viewers. Along with his next movie Bang the Drum it established him as one of the most promising children's film directors, but Saltykov decided otherwise.
In 1964 he directed a post-war drama The Chairman. Based on the screenplay by Yuri Nagibin, it told a fictionalized story of a real-life Belarusian partisan Kirill Orlovsky (named Egor Trubnikov in the movie) who lost his arm during the war, then headed one of the ruined kolkhozes and turned it into the most prosperous countryside. He was portrayed by Mikhail Ulyanov in The Chairman. The movie also featured a number of themes unusual for the cinema of that era, including post-war hunger, bureaucracy that prevented quicker recovery, lack of men and repressive methods of NKVD. At the same time, it showed the strength of village people who rebuilt the countryside from scratch despite everything.
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