Stanislav Govorukhin

Stanislav Sergeyevich Govorukhin PAR (Russian: Станислав Серге́евич Говорухин; born 29 March 1936 died 14 June 2018) was one of the most popular Soviet and Russian film directors since the 1960s.

His films, often featuring detective or adventure plots, are commonly dominated by strong male characters who seek to revenge criminal acts but have to eschew commonly accepted social norms in order to succeed.

Biography

Govorukhin was born in Berezniki, Sverdlovsk Oblast (now Perm Krai). His parents divorced before he was born. His father Sergei Georgievich Govorukhin came from Don Cossacks and was arrested as part of the decossackization genocide campaign started by Yakov Sverdlov. He had been exiled to Siberia where he died around 1938 at the age of 30. His mother Praskovya Afanasievna Glazkova was a tailor. She came from the Volga region, from a simple Russian family of a village school teacher. She raised Sergei and his sister Inessa by herself and died at the age of 53.

Govorukhin started his career as a geologist in 1958. He then joined a television studio in Kazan and enrolled at the VGIK. During the Soviet period, Govorukhin became noted for his successful adaptations of adolescent classics, including Robinson Crusoe (1973), Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1981), In Search of the Castaways (1983), and Desyat Negrityat (an adaptation of Agatha Christie's original 1939 novel And Then There Were None) in 1987  Most of his Soviet movies were made at the Odessa Film Studio. He was good friends with Vladimir Vysotsky and directed three movies starring him - Vertical (1967), White Explosion (1969) and The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed (1979), one of the cult films of the late Soviet era. Several other of his films feature Visotsky's songs written as part of the soundtrack.

Apart from directing, he also wrote screenplays (including the top-grossing Soviet action film Pirates of the 20th Centurydirected by his fellow student Boris Durov in 1979) and started in movies as an actor. Being a professional mountaineer, he usually did all the tricks by himself. He also dedicated several movies to mountaineering, most notably Vertical and White Explosion which became some of the first examples of this subgenre in the Soviet cinema. In recent years he has been also actively working as a producer.

After the Perestroika, Govorukhin became less active at film making and more active in politics. He became one of the leaders of the Democratic Party of Russia. In 1990, he directed a much-publicised documentary highly critical of the Soviet society, entitled Tak zhit nelzya, which translates to these similar expressions, We Can't Live Like This or You can't Live Like That or This is no way to live . Although his feature films were previously ignored by the critical establishment, this film won him the Nika Award for Best Director. It was at that time that Govorukhin released an extensive interview with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Govorukhin has been a member of the State Duma since its inauguration in 1993, running the Duma culture committee for some time. Following the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, he had abandoned his previous democratic anti-communist convictions and sided with the national-communist opposition. In 1996, he supported Gennady Zyuganov against Boris Yeltsin during the second round of the presidential election campaign. In 2000, he took part in Russian presidential elections, but failed to be elected. At a Duma by-election in 2005, Govorukhin's opponent, the journalist and satirist Victor Shenderovich, accused him of using illegal funds to guarantee his victory.

By the start of 2000's Govorukhin returned to the cinema, co-starring with Alisa Friendlich in the detective TV series Female Logic and releasing another revenge movie, The Rifleman of the Voroshilov Regiment (with Mikhail Ulyanov in the lead role).

In 2009 Govorukhin started to shoot a movie by Ksenya Stepanycheva screenplay; the movie’s name is “Hearts of Four”.

2011 - 2012 - the head of Vladimir Putin's campaign office.

In June 2013 Govorukhin joined the central staff of the All-Russia People's Front, led by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In March 2014 he signed a letter in support of the position of the President of Russia Vladimir Putin on Russia's annexation of Crimea.

Govorukhin died on June 14, 2018, after a long illness.

Personal life

Govorukhin was married twice. He had one son from his first marriage — Sergey Govorukhin (1961–2011), a war correspondent, writer and director of documentary films who took part in different armed conflicts in Tajikistan, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and both Chechen wars between 1994 and 2005. In 1995 he was wounded by Chechen terrorists which resulted in one of his legs being amputated. Nevertheless, he continued his work. In 1998 he released one of the most acclaimed documentaries about the First Chechen War — Damned and Forgotten that was awarded with the Nika Awardin 1998 as the best documentary. He also took part in several non-governmental organizations dedicated to helping disabled war veterans. In 2011 he survived a stroke and died several days later at the age of 50. He left two sons and one daughter.

During the 1990s Stanislav Govorukhin became professionally interested in landscape painting. He has conducted a number of expositions since 1998.

Govorukhin belongs to the Russian Orthodox Church. In 2016 during his 80th birthday Patriarch Kirill of Moscow awarded him with the II class Order of Sergius of Radonezh.