Kira Muratova

Kira Heorhiyivna Muratova (Ukrainian: Кіра Георгіївна Мура́това; née Korotkova, November 5, 1934 – June 6, 2018) was a Ukrainian award-winning film director, screenwriter and actress, known for her unusual directorial style.

Her films underwent a great deal of censorship in the Soviet Union.

Muratova spent most of her artistic career in Odessa, creating her films with local studios, mostly casting local actors.

Biography

Early life and career

Kira Korotkova was born in 1934 in Soroca, Romania (present-day Moldova) to a Jewish mother and a Russian father. Her parents were both active communists and members of the Communist Party. Her father participated in the anti-fascist guerilla movement in World War II, was arrested by Romanian forces and shot after interrogation. After the war, Kira lived in Bucharest with her mother, a gynaecologist, who then pursued a government career in Socialist Romania.

In 1959, Kira graduated from the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography in Moscow, specializing in directing. Upon graduation Korotkova received a director position with the Odessa Film Studio in Odessa, a port city at the Black Sea near to her native Bessarabia.

She directed her first professional film in 1961 and worked with the studio until a professional conflict made her to move to Leningrad in 1978. There she made one film with Lenfilm Studio, but returned to Odessa afterwards. Muratova's films came under constant criticism of the Soviet officials due to her idiosyncratic film language that did not comply with the norms of socialist realism. Film scholar Isa Willinger has compared Muratova's cinematographic form to the Soviet Avant-garde, especially to Eisenstein's montage of attractions. Several times Muratova was banned from working as a director for a number of years each time.

Kira married her fellow Odessa studio director Oleksandr Muratov in the early 1960s and co-created several films with him. The couple had a daughter, Marianna, but soon divorced and Muratov moved to Kiev where he started work with Dovzhenko Film Studios. Kira Muratova kept her ex-husband's surname despite her later marriage to Leningrad painter and production designer Evgeny Golubenko.

Post-Soviet period

In the 1990s, an extremely productive period began for Muratova. Ever since she has been shooting a feature film every two or three years, often working with the same actors and crew. Two actresses Muratova has repeatedly cast are Renata Litvinova and Natalya Buzko. Usually, Muratova's films are productions of Ukraine or co-productions between Ukraine and Russia, though the films are always in the Russian language (although Muratova could speak Ukrainian did not object to the Ukrainianization of Ukrainian cinema). Muratova supported the Euromaidan protesters and the following 2014  Ukrainian revolution.

Muratova films have been premiering at International Film Festivals in Berlin, Cannes, Moscow, Rome, Venice and others. Next to Aleksandr Sokurov, Muratova is considered to be the most idiosyncratic contemporary Russian-language film director. Muratova's works can be seen as postmodern, employing eclecticism, parody, discontinuous editing, disrupted narration and intense visual and sound stimuli.

Recognition and awards

It was only during Perestroyka that Muratova received wide public recognition and first awards. In 1988, the International Women's Film Festival Créteil (France) showed a first retrospective of her works. Her film Among Grey Stones was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival.

In 1990, her film Asthenic Syndrome won the Jury Grand Prix at the Berlinale. 

In 1994, she was awarded the Leopard of Honour for her life oeuvre at The Locarno International Film Festival (Switzerland) and in 2000, she was given the Andrzej Wajda Freedom Award. In 1997, her film Three Stories was entered into the 47th Berlin International Film Festival. 

Her 2002 film Chekhov's Motifs was entered into the 24th Moscow International Film Festival. Her film The Tuner was shown at the Venice Film Festival in 2004. Her films received the Russian "Nika" prize in 1991, 1995, 2005, 2007, 2009 and 2013. In 2005, a retrospective was shown at the Lincoln Center in New York City.

In 2013, a full retrospective of her films was shown at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

• Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise
• Order of Friendship
• People's Artist of Ukraine
• 1993 Shevchenko National Prize

Filmography

Director

• У Крутого Яра (By the Step Ravine) (with Oleksandr Muratov) (1961)
• Наш честный хлеб (Our Honest Bread) (with Oleksandr Muratov) (1964)
• Короткие встречи (Brief Encounters) (1967)
• Долгие проводы (The Long Farewell) (1971)
• Познавая белый свет (Getting to Know the Big, Wide World) (1978)
• Среди серых камней (Among Grey Stones) (1983) - renunciated by Muratova after major political censorship upon screen premiere (a "John Doe" is credited in titles)
• Перемена участи (Change of Fate) (1987)
• Астенический синдром (The Asthenic Syndrome) (1989)
• Чувствительный милиционер (The Sentimental Policeman) (1992)
• Увлеченья (Passions) (1994)
• Три истории (Three Stories) (1997)
• Письмо в Америку (Letter to America) (short) (1999)
• Второстепенные люди (Minor People) (2001)
• Чеховские мотивы (Chekhov's Motifs) (2002)
• Настройщик (The Tuner) (2004)
• Справка (Certification) (short) (2005)
• Кукла (Dummy) (short) (2006)
• Два в одном (Two in One) (2007)
• Мелодия для шарманки (Melody for a Street-organ) (2009)
• Вечное возвращение. Кастинг (Eternal Redemption: The Casting) (2012)

Screenplay

• У Крутого Яра (By the Step Ravine) (with Oleksandr Muratov) (1961)
• Короткие встречи (Brief Encounters) (1967)
• Познавая белый свет (Getting to Know the Big, Wide World) (1978)
• Перемена участи (Change of Fate) (1987)
• Астенический синдром (The Asthenic Syndrome) (1989)
• Чувствительный милиционер (The Sentimental Policeman) (1992)
• Второстепенные люди (Minor People) (2001)
• Чеховские мотивы (Chekhov's Motifs) (2002)
• Настройщик (The Tuner) (2004)
• Мелодия для шарманки (Melody for a Street-organ) (2009)
• Вечное возвращение. Кастинг (Eternal Redemption: The Casting) (2012)

Actress

• Наш честный хлеб (Our Honest Bread) (with Oleksandr Muratov) (1964)
• Короткие встречи (Brief Encounters) (1967)
• Опасные гастроли (Dangerous Tour) (1969) - uncredited in titles
• Сад желаний (Garden of Desires) (1987)
• Посторонний (Passer-by) (1993)

Book

Upon an initiative of the arts patron Yuri Komelkov, Atlant UMC has published an album on Kira Muratova's work. In this album, the author of the photos, Konstantin Donin, confined himself to the film set frames, acting as a screen reporter of the film Two-in-one.