Evening of memory of film director Viktor Turov will be held in the cinema “Moscow”

A memorable evening dedicated to the 90th anniversary of the film director, People's Artist of the USSR and the BSSR Viktor Turov will be held at 17:00 on October 31 at the Moskva cinema, the correspondent of the Minsk-Novosti agency was informed in the cultural institution.

Photo by TASS

The evening will be held during the Minsk International Film Festival “Listapad”. People’s Artist of Russia Nikolai Burlyaev, People’s Artists of Belarus Vladimir Gostyukhin, Alexander Efremov, Honored Artist of Russia Elena Borzova, People’s Artist of the BSSR Maria Zakharevich and others will take part.

V. Turov is an outstanding film director, whose works occupy an important place not only in the history of Belarusian and Soviet cinema, but also enter the golden fund of world cinema. He is a native of Mogilev, graduated from the directorial faculty of the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography.

From 1961 until the end of his life he worked at the film studio “Belarusfilm”. He was an artistic director, continuing the work of the classic and one of the founders of Belarusian cinema Vladimir Korsch-Sablin.

The end-to-end theme of the director’s work was war as the greatest tragedy of society and every person. During the Great Patriotic War, V. Turov was sent as a child to a concentration camp, where he miraculously survived, and after the Victory he was able to return to his native Belarus.

One of the first significant works of the director was the film Through the Cemetery (1964), dedicated to guerrilla warfare. In 1994, by the decision of a special commission of UNESCO, he was among the 100 best world films about war.

I Come from Childhood (1966) tells the story of teenagers whose lives were changed by war. V. Turov addressed the military theme in the films “War under the roofs” (1967) and “Sons go into battle” (1969). In his works about the war, the director sought to show not only the course of historical events, but also how the war affected the fate of ordinary people.

The film chronicle of the Belarusian Polesie of the 1920s was an expressive film-language dilogy “People in the Swamp” (1981) and “Breath of a Thunderstorm” (1982). In the last picture “Shlyakhtich Zavalnya, or Belarus in fantastic stories” (1994), the master turned to national fiction.

V. Turova had a long-term friendship with the famous actor of theater and cinema, poet and performer Vladimir Vysotsky. They met while working on the film “I come from childhood”, where Vysotsky played the role of tanker Volody and performed several author’s songs.

At various times, V. Turov worked with actors N. Burlyaev, Anatoly Papanov, V. Gostyukhin, Donatas Banionis, Valery Zolotukhin, production operators Yuri Marukhin, Alexander Knyazhinsky, Evgeny Zaitsev.

The director was at the origins of the creation of his own school for the preparation of film frames in Belarus. From 1989 to 1996, V. Turov taught at the Belarusian State Academy of Arts (then the Belarusian State Theatre and Art Institute), where he led a directorial studio as a professor.

The father’s case is continued by his daughter, screenwriter, director of feature and animated films Elena Turova. His son Artem Turov is a statesman and politician, deputy of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of Russia, deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs, Eurasian integration and relations with compatriots.

For reference

The organizers of the event are the Ministry of Culture of Belarus, the Belarusian Union of Cinematographers, the National Film Studio “Belarusfilm”, “Kinovideoprokat” of the Minsk City Executive Committee, the Belarusian State Archive of Cinema Photo Documents.