Alexander Yakovlevich Askoldov

Alexander Jakowlewitsch Askoldow ( Russian Александр Яковлевич Аскольдов ; born February 17, 1932 in Moscow ; died May 21, 2018 in Gothenburg ) was a Russian film director and writer.

His first and only feature film The Commissioner from 1967 fell victim to the ban by film censorship without having been shown and remained unknown for 20 years; Askoldow was not allowed to continue working as a director. It was only with the political change in the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s and the glasnost in Soviet cultural policy that Askoldow's work received national and international honors.

Theater and film critic 1955–1964

In 1955 Askoldov graduated from Moscow State University with a degree in literature. At the center of his academic activity were the works of Mikhail Bulgakov and Maxim Gorkis . He also gave lectures and worked as a theater and film critic and as a dramaturgical advisor, among others. a. for the Pushkin Theater in Leningrad .

As an employee at the Soviet Ministry of Culture and a functionary at the state film production and censorship authority Goskino , Askoldow gained in-depth insight into the conditions of Soviet film production in the following years. In 1964, he gave up working as an agency to work creatively himself.

Director 1964–1967

Askoldow completed his training as a film director. In 1967 he submitted the film Die Kommissarin to his former employer, the Goskino , as his final thesis for review.

The screenplay, also written by Askoldov, is based on motifs from the story In the City of Berditschew (В городе Бердичеве) by Vasily Grossman : During the Russian Civil War , a political commissar of the Red Army lodged in a small town with a Jewish family and was taken care of by theirs Army unit left there to bear their child.

Askoldov contrasted the deceptive family idyll in flashbacks and flashbacks with the brutal violence of the Revolutionary War and combined the threat to the Jewish civilian population in Ukraine from the ubiquitous threat of pogroms with visions of the annihilation of the Jewish population in Eastern Europe in the Holocaust after the National Socialist attack on the Soviet Union .

From the pogroms of the civil war as well as the Holocaust was u. a. affected the Jewish community of the real city of Berdichev ; In Askoldow's film, however, the city has no name.

Film censorship and professional bans 1967–1987

The commissioner was immediately banned as hostile to the state by the censorship authority and kept under lock and key in the Mosfilm studios. Askoldov was expelled from the Communist Party , had to leave Moscow and was no longer allowed to work as a director. As a result, Askoldow was practically forbidden from working, he had to live off casual work, etc. a. in a carpentry and cement mixer brigade in Kazan .

Towards the end of the 1970s, Askoldov received tacit rehabilitation, he got his party membership back, was able to return to Moscow and was also allowed to work in the cultural field again - since 1980 he has organized events in a music theater - but he was no longer allowed to make one feature film.

Late honors from 1988

Askoldov did not receive full rehabilitation and recognition of his artistic achievement until the Gorbachev era, albeit a little laborious: his film was first shown 20 years after its production at the 1987 Moscow Film Festival following direct intervention by the director.

In 1986 a conflict commission set up specifically for the rehabilitation of once banned films and filmmakers decided that Die Kommissarin should be restored and published uncensored, but there was no reaction at the Goskino. For example, Askoldov's film was not included in the program of the Moscow Festival in 1987, although this festival was supposed to be a joyous celebration of glasnost cultural politics. Askoldow himself referred to his work as an uninvited guest at a press conference and achieved an improvised performance as part of the festival for the next day - with that the film had become public and was shown in cinemas and at film festivals around the world the following year.

Its first performance in the true sense of the word took place at the Berlinale in 1988 : The commissioner was celebrated as a masterpiece and was awarded several prizes, including the Silver Bear . In the then still existing GDR, however, the film was banned again in 1988 after a few screenings.

After 1987 the director lived in Berlin and Moscow and taught at film schools in various European countries.

In 1998 Askoldow published the novel Heimkehr nach Jerusalem , which was translated into German, among other things.

Trivia

Askoldow made a cameo as himself in Otar Iosseliani's 1992 film Hunting for Butterflies (French: La Chasse aux papillons ) .

Works

as a film director and screenwriter:

• The Commissioner (Russian Комиссар), Moscow 1967/1988

as a writer:

• Return to Jerusalem . From the Russian by Antje Leetz, Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 1998, ISBN 978-3353011374 .

literature

• Cécile Vaissié: La non-existence, punition des artistes soviétiques non-conformes. Le cas d'Alexandre Askoldov et de son film, La Commissaire. Communisme 70/71, 2002, pp. 245-269, ISSN  0751-3496
• Anna Lawton: Before the Fall: Soviet Cinema in the Gorbachev Years , Washington, DC, New Academia Publishing, 2004, pp. 121-124. ISBN 978-0974493404 .
• Richard Sandomir: Alexander Askoldov, Whose Banned Film Was Found, Dies at 85 , The New York Times, Obituaries, June 6, 2018.

Web links

• Alexander Askoldov in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Literature by and about Alexander Jakowlewitsch Askoldow in the catalog of the German National Library

Remarks

1. ↑ according to other information in 1935 in Kiev - for date and place of birth as well as all unspecified biographical information s. Short biography in the bonus material of the DVD publication by Die Kommissarin , DEFA Foundation 1999; also kinoglaz.fr ; the Library of Congress and the German National Library give 1937 as the year of birth, without specifying the location; the New York Times states in the obituary June 17, 1932.
2. ↑ Richard Sandomir: Alexander Askoldov, Whose Banned Film Was Found, Dies at 85 , The New York Times, June 6, 2018; accessed December 9, 2018.
3. ↑ Vaissié, La non-existence, pp 249-251.
4. ↑ Lawton, Before the Fall, pp. 123 f.
5. ↑ two reviews are linked by way of example: Andreas Kilb, Die Nacht von Berditschew, Im Kino, twenty years too late: Alexander Askoldow's masterpiece “Die Kommissarin” , Die Zeit 44, October 28, 1988 and Olga Carlisle, Commissar Makes a Delayed Debut , New York Times, June 12, 1988 ; both accessed December 8, 2018.
6. ↑ Helmut Altrichter: Russia 1989, the fall of the Soviet empire , Beck, Munich 2009, p. 304 f, ISBN 978-3-406-58266-0 .