Eldar Shengelaia
| Eldar Shengelaia | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
26 January 1933 Tbilisi, Georgian SSR, Soviet Union (now Georgia) |
| Occupation | Film director, screenwriter |
| Years active | 1957-1996 |
Eldar Shengelaia (Georgian: ელდარ შენგელაია; Russian: Эльда́р Никола́евич Шенгела́я; born 26 January 1933) is a Georgian and Soviet film director and screenwriter who directed ten films between 1957 and 1996. From 1990 to 2004, he was a member of the Parliament of Georgia. He has been awarded the titles of the People's Artist of Georgia (1979) and of the Soviet Union (1988). He has been a chairman of the Film-makers' Union of Georgia since 1976. Since 2008, he has been chairman of the State Council of Heraldry at the Parliament of Georgia.
Eldar Shengelia was born in Tbilisi, the capital of then-Soviet Georgia into the family of the film director Nikoloz Shengelaia and actress Nato Vachnadze. His brother, Giorgi Shengelaia is also a film director.
He graduated from the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow in 1958 and then worked for the Mosfilm studio. In 1960, he became a director at the Tbilisi-based Gruziya-film studio. In 1969, Shengelaia gained nationwide acclaim with the satyrical tragicomedy Arachveulebrivi gamopena ("An Unusual Exhibition") socio-political allusions of which caused discontent in the official Soviet cinema establishment. Since then, Shengelaia has retained a reputation of a highly individual filmmaker.
Shengelaia produced another high-profile tragicomedy about inept bureaucracy Tsisperi mtebi anu daujerebeli ambavi ("Blue Mountains, or Unbelievable Story"), one of the best achievements in the Soviet "social fiction" genre. It won the All-Union Film Festival Prize in 1984 and the USSR State Prize in 1985. After a major success in the 1980s, Eldar Shengelaia distanced himself from the cinema and became involved in the Georgian independence movement which gained a momentum in 1989. In the 1990s, Shengelaia briefly returned to the cinema and produced two films which were positively received by critics but did not attract a broader public attention.
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