Poster

Kira Muratova

Ukrainian and Soviet film director, screenwriter and actress 5 November 1934 – 6 June 2018)

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.
Kira Korotkova was born in 1934 in Soroca, Romania (present-day Moldova).
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.[6] 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.

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 and 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 Alexander 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.

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.

Filmography:

2012 Eternal Redemption: The Casting
2009 Melody for a Street-organ
2007 Two in One
2006 Dummy short
2005 Certification short
2004 The Tuner
2002 Chekhov’s Motifs
2001 Minor People
1999 Letter to America short
1997 Three Stories
1994 Passions
1992 The Sentimental Policeman
1989 The Asthenic Syndrome
1987 Change of Fate
1983 Among Grey Stones – Renounced by Muratova after major political censorship (credited to “Ivan Sidorov” )
1978 Getting to Know the Big, Wide World
1971 The Long Farewell
1967 Brief Encounters
1964 Our Honest Bread
1961 By the Steep Ravine With Aleksandr Muratov