Celebrity Biographies
Marlen Khutsiev
Before the start of the Nouvelle Vague in France in the 50s, some Soviet filmmakers such as Marlen Khutsiev advanced the main characteristics of the movement, in works such as “Rain in July” and “I am twenty years old”. Marlen Khutsiev, passed away on Tuesday, March 19, 2019, at the age of 93, in Moscow, a few days after being hospitalized as a result of internal bleeding. He could have achieved better things if he had not been suppressed by the communist regime.
Born on October 4, 1925 in Tbilisi, Georgia, Marlen Khutsiev was the son of actress Nina Mikhailovna Utenelishvili, and Martyn Levanovich Khutsishvili, a communist party member who was purged when their son was still very young. He graduated in filmmaking at the Gerasimov School, in the Russian capital.
After accepting a contract at the Odessa studios, the first founded in Russia. He made his big screen debut co-directing Spring on Zarechnaya Street with Felix Mironer . Already alone he was responsible for Dva Fyodora , who made Vasily Shukshin popular . It was consecrated with the aforementioned Rain in July and I’m Twenty Years Old , which anticipated the films of Jean-Luc Godard and company, since they used non-professional actors, were shot on the street, included documentary sequences, and displayed a subversive spirit, while expose the problems of youth.
Despite their international repercussion, both films infuriate the communist authorities, to the point that they relegate the filmmaker to silence; he would not return to the big screen until two decades later, with Posleslovie, from 1986, a year after Perestroika began at the hands of the new president, Mikhail Gorbachev. At least in 1978 they had allowed him to join the Gerasimov School as a teacher where he himself studied. With Infitnitas , from 1991, he won the Alfred Bauer award at the Berlin Film Festival.
Still active, upon his death he leaves Lyubimaya moya zhizn! , in post-production phase. The film focuses on the relationship between two greats of Russian literature, Anton Chekhov and Leo Tolstoy .