- Born
- Died
- Birth nameLev Aleksandrovich Kulidzhanov
- Lev Kulidzhanov was born on March 19, 1924 in Tiflis, Georgian SSR, TSFSR, USSR [now Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia]. He was a director and writer, known for When the Trees Were Tall (1962), Nezabudki (1994) and Otchiy dom (1959). He died on February 18, 2002 in Moscow, Russia.
- He received in the order "For Merit to the Fatherland", 3rd class (1999) - for an outstanding contribution to cinema and at his 75th birthday.
- His first success happened with a movie The House I Live In co-directed with Yakov Segel. It became one of the 1957 Soviet box office leaders, reaching the 9th place with 28.9 million viewers. Not only it was the first cinema role of the acclaimed Russian actress Zhanna Bolotova, but Kulidzhanov himself also played one of the characters. It was his only big screen role in the entire career.
- He was the head of the Union of Cinematographers of the USSR (1965-1986).
- From 1942 to 1943 he studied at the Tbilisi State University.
- In 1965 Kulidzhanov was elected as the head of the Union of Cinematographers of the USSR, substituting Ivan Pyryev at this post. As the head of the Union he helped to preserve a lot of films, founded the Cinema Museum and saved the archive of Sergei Eisenstein. He held this position for 20 years straight, up till the scandalous 5th Congress of the Soviet Filmmakers in 1986 when a group of activists (presumably encouraged by Alexander Yakovlev) started booing the lecturers, accusing Kulidzhanov and other leading directors of «nepotism» and «political conformism» and demanding a reelection of the whole board. All this led to a split, restructuring and a quick demise of the Soviet cinema.
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