Pavel Kogan

Directing

Pavel Kogan

Born 1931-07-09 · Leningrad, Russia, Soviet Union [now Saint Petersburg, Russia]

Pavel Kogan was born on July, 9, 1931 in Leningrad. He got two external high school degrees, that of Leningrad State University and GITIS; was employed as dumb performer by Kirov (presently Mariinsky) Opera. Finding himself, by vagaries of fate, in the cinema, he directed more than 35 documentary films. These films include, on the one hand, such as “The band of military tunes” (1968) in partnership with P. Mostovoy, which got the best film award, the Golden Dove, of Leipzig Festival; on the other hand, such as the full-length “Mutiny in Sobibor” (1989) being a revelation to Pavel himself as it was his first encounter with the Jewish subject and the topic of European Jewry’s holocaust, and being the first international Soviet-Dutch project. In 1989, the film was awarded with Joris Ivens prize at the Amsterdam international Festival. For twenty years he was teaching the film directing at Leningrad Institute of Theatre, Music and Cinematography. For over ten years he hosted “Cinema and time” show on Leningrad TV, hence called “Kapler of Leningrad”. In 1992, Pavel fell seriously ill. Medicine in Russia, along with Germany and Israel turned out to be ineffective. Pavel passed away November, 3, 1998. He was buried in Komarovo. Pavel reminisced once about himself:- «I was the third infant of the family. The elder brother went to battlefields to be killed in the first month. During the siege of the city, my sister, a university student, served in the army, in AA defence. Father died from starvation under siege; he was a clockmaker, buried in a mass grave in Piskarievskoye cemetery. Mother died soon after the break-through, in post-war time. At the age of 14, I started working in the evenings making hairpins, knitting fisherman’s nets, botching up crates. Gradually, I finished secondary school, dreaming of entering a department of linguistics, but the tide had been turning already, “With a name like yours [a Jewish name], one has nothing to do here”. It was in 1948. I entered the university for political economy, when it was sought after by no one. But how can one live on the scholarship alone? A certain lass let to know that it was possible to be employed by Kirov Theatre, in a troop of supers, saying, “With a black stocking spread on your face, you will represent a negro boy in “Aida” performance”. My pay was 40 roubles a month. In my infancy, I had been admitted to the cello class. I seem to have been pitch perfect after all, but we had absolutely no money for the instrument, so I changer over to the cornet-a-piston. I learned to play the cornet until happened to break a tooth, yet I kept a passion for brass music for life. While in the Theatre, learnt all at the Opera by heart. There was some aptitude for literature, too. One sketch of mine was published by Boris Polevoy, in the “Yunost’” magazine, he urged me to keep on writing. Whereas at the stage, I did but serve the top hat and gloves to Lemeshev as Lensky. Lucky for me, I was cashiered from the Theatre. After 10 years at that, and again – because of my nationality. Yet it was year 1959. I was walking along Kriukov canal and saw hard-by – and I had been unaware that quite hard-by the Teatre it was – the studio “Lenkinokhronika” (Leningrad documentary). There I forced myself into being the assistant stage manager – “

Acting credits

Behind the camera

Look at the Face poster
5.6

Short film in the Hermitage Museum looking at da Vinci's Madonna Litta.

Look at the Face

1966

Summer Is Soon poster
NR

The everyday life of the candy factory. A gray, exhausting life, and a guest lecturer talks about beautiful feelings, about love and courtship. He does not know what it costs to make a box of chocolates that someone will bring to his beloved woman on March 8. It's snowing, covering the streets. Then spring will come, then summer, but still in the smoking room, the workers of the candy factory, in rare moments of rest, will talk about their lives, which are passing.

Summer Is Soon

1987

Classes poster
NR

The art of theater is a complex craft. In 19 minutes, you can’t convey everything that is taught over five years. Our film is only a short walk through the Lunacharsky State Institute of Theatre Arts, a cinematic panorama of three directing classes. The classes of M. O. Knebel, A. A. Goncharov, and A. V. Efros.

Classes

1967

Classes poster
NR

The art of theater is a complex craft. In 19 minutes, you can’t convey everything that is taught over five years. Our film is only a short walk through the Lunacharsky State Institute of Theatre Arts, a cinematic panorama of three directing classes. The classes of M. O. Knebel, A. A. Goncharov, and A. V. Efros.

Classes

1967

No artwork available
NR

Using the example of one GITIS course, led by People's Artist of the Republic Professor Maria Osipovna Knebel, the training methods for future theatre directors are demonstrated.

In Directing Classes

1966

No artwork available
NR

Using the example of one GITIS course, led by People's Artist of the Republic Professor Maria Osipovna Knebel, the training methods for future theatre directors are demonstrated.

In Directing Classes

1966

City Under Siege poster
NR

In the postwar years, many photographs and newsreels taken during the Siege were confiscated and destroyed for presenting too “subjective” a view of the events of that time. This film is the result of a long search through the Leningrad archives. Out of thousands of surviving wartime photographs, the director selected four hundred that had never before been used in cinema. The film is a montage of these historical documents, accompanied by the voices of poets Olga Berggolts and Alexander Prokofyev, radio announcer Yuri Levitan, and the sounds of air raid sirens…

City Under Siege

1969

No artwork available
NR

Film from the Leningrad Documentary Film Studio.

Proud Humility

1965

Flight poster
NR

Portrait of test pilot Alexander Shcherbakov.

Flight

1972

Flight poster
NR

Portrait of test pilot Alexander Shcherbakov.

Flight

1972

Alisa Freyndlikh poster
NR

Alisa Freyndlikh in a rush — there isn't a single calm, free minute. Rehearsals, discussions of roles with Igor Vladimirov, her daughter Varya's birthday, daytime and evening performances, meetings with the audience...

Alisa Freyndlikh

1979

No artwork available
NR

Profession — Operator

1987

No artwork available
NR

A look back at the 1969 Ice Hockey World Championships in Stockholm.

Big Hockey

1969

No artwork available
NR

A film about the history, drama, and glory of Russian ballet abroad. The film is based on interviews with Russian ballerinas Natalia Makarova, Nina Vyrubova, Irina Grzhebina, Irina Vasilyeva, Olga Vershinina-Debasile, and theatrical designers Dmitry Bushen and Alexander Vasiliev.

Russian Ballet Without Russia

1990

No artwork available
NR

About the first visit to Russia of Mstislav Rostropovich and Galina Vishnevskaya after 16 years of forced emigration.

Mstislav Rostropovich. The Return

1990

No artwork available
NR

Cinematic surveillance of people standing in line at Lenin's Mausoleum in Red Square.

Day by Day

1968

Your Very Personal Poetry poster
NR

This poetic core in youngsters is also touched in Stanukina's less known Your very personal poetry (Свои, совсем особые стихи, 1982), a wonderful film about a poetry class. It is here that one recalls Kogan's admiration of Lyalya's emotional documentary skills. And it is here that one recalls Kosakovsky's depiction of Lyalya as a person of extraordinarily prosperous feelings, sensitive and energetic, childish and female, shrill and quiet. The young poets are marvellously sneaky, respectfully adoring and creatively playing with - maybe even deconstructing - "Aleksandr Sergeevich", Mr. Pushkin, Russia's exclusive trade mark of high culture and literature.

Your Very Personal Poetry

1982

No artwork available
NR

About life in the village of Verkola, the birthplace of the great Russian writer Fyodor Abramov, to whose memory the painting is dedicated. The northern Arkhangelsk region where the writer Fyodor Abramov grew up. Portraits of the writer's fellow countrymen, residents of the village of Verkola, their lives, work, and daily life.

Give Us This Day

1988

Military Music Orchestra poster
NR

Tells about the everyday life of the military music orchestra. The most difficult thing is to play a parade concert or “defile”. A defile is when military musicians play a march in motion, without straying from a clear marching step, or from the rhythm, without violating the strict musical pattern. For a professional, this is not so difficult to do, but how did an orchestra from a generally ordinary military unit manage to do this?

Military Music Orchestra

1968

Revolt in Sobibor poster
NR

Revolt in Sobibor is a beautifully filmed portrait of four survivors of the uprising in the Sobibór extermination camp in Eastern Poland, close to the Russian border.

Revolt in Sobibor

1989

The Limit of Possible poster
7.5

No synopsis available yet.

The Limit of Possible

1984

The House is Being Built poster
9.0

The plot is based on a conflict that arose at the architectural design institute.

The House is Being Built

1978