The Films of Larisa Shepitko

Larisa Shepitko is one of the great forgotten figures of Soviet cinema in the 1960s and '70s. Born in the Ukraine in 1938, she moved to Moscow as a young woman to attend the All-Russian State University of Cinematography (VGIK). There she studied directing under Alexander Dovzhenko, whose visionary film language and attitude toward life and art had a profound influence on her. The guiding principles of her work were her unconditional dedication to truthfulness and uncompromising advocacy of art. Existential questions and the actions of people torn between their own desires and superordinate values lie at the core of her films. In the process, she created a visual language that was able to evoke interior worlds through forceful images. Shepitko was among the key directors of the post-Stalinist Thaw-era in Soviet cinema, when state-mandated Formalism gave way to individual modes of expression. The comparative cultural and political freedom of the Khrushchev Era ended, however, in 1967-68. By that time, Shepitko had written and directed two films, her student film ZNOJ (1963) and KRYLYA (1966), as well as a segment of an omnibus project commissioned in 1967 for the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution. The latter was completed but denied release, and was first shown only twenty years later, well after her death. Her international breakthrough came in 1977, when her fourth film VOSKHOZHDENIYE ("The Ascent") was awarded the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Shepitko is frequently referred to as the "unfinished one" – she died in 1979 at the age of forty in an automobile accident, together with four other members of her crew. Her husband, director Elem Klimov, finally completed FAREWELL TO MATYORA in 1983.