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Famous Like Me > Director > C > Grigori Chukhraj

Profile of Grigori Chukhraj on Famous Like Me

 
Name: Grigori Chukhraj  
   
Also Know As:
   
Date of Birth: 23rd May 1921
   
Place of Birth: Melitopol, Ukraine, Soviet Union
   
Profession: Director
 
 
From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia

Grigori Naumovich Chukhrai (Russian: Григорий Наумович Чухрай; , born May 23, 1921 - died October 28, 2001, was a prominent film director and screenwriter in the former Soviet Union. He is the father of director Pavel Chukhrai.

He was born in Melitopol' in the Zaporiz'ka oblast' Region of the Ukraine. A decorated veteran of World War II, Chukhrai's wartime experiences profoundly affected him and the majority of his films were connected with events of the War. At war's end, he studied filmmaking at the Soviet State Film School and then developed his craft as a director's assistant at the Kiev Film Studio. By the mid 1950s, he began writing and directing his own films, gaining cinematic recognition outside the Soviet Union at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival with his film Sorok pervyj (The Forty-first).

In 1959, Chukhrai co-wrote and directed his greatest work, Ballad of a Soldier. A story of love and the tragedy of war made without the usual Soviet propaganda, the film received great acclaim at home earning the prestigious Lenin Prize. It was heralded internationally for both its story and cinematic technique and at Cannes in 1960 the film was awarded a special jury prize for "high humanism and outstanding quality." Ballad of a Soldier overcame the Cold War barrier and premiered in the United States in 1960 at the San Francisco International Film Festival in San Francisco, California. The film won the Festival's Golden Gate Award, for Best Picture and for Best Director for Grigori Chukhrai. Playing worldwide, the following year it earned the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Best Picture Award. Grigori Chukhrai and script co-writer Valentin Yezhov were nominated for an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay.

Chukhrai's next film, released in 1961, was titled Chistoye nebo (Clear Skies) and told the story of a Soviet pilot who survived Nazi imprisonment during the war but was later accused of being a spy. It was one of the first Soviet films to deal with some of the repressive and corrupt doings of the Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin.

In 1984, at age 63, Grigori Chukhrai directed his final film. He wrote a book of war memoirs and in 1994, for his lifetime contribution to film, Chukhrai was given a Nika Award, the Russian film industry's equivalent of an Oscar.

Grigori Chukhrai died of heart failure in Moscow in 2001 at the age of eighty.

Films directed by Grigori Chukhrai:

  • Ya nauchu vas mechtat... (I'll Teach You to Dream) (1984)
  • Zhizn' prekrasna (Life Is Beautiful) (1979)
  • Tryasina (Untypical Story) (1978)
  • Pamyat (film) (Memory) (1971)
  • People! (1966)
  • Zhili-byli starik so starukhoj (There Was an Old Couple) (1965)
  • Chistoye nebo (Clear Skies) (1961)
  • Ballada o soldate (Ballad of a Soldier) (1959)
  • Sorok pervyj (The Forty-first) (1956)
  • Nazar Stodolya (1955)

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Grigori Chukhraj