Kalina krasnaya : Premier prix au festival de l'Union Soviétique, 1974
Biography
Vassily Shukshin was born on July 25, 1929 in Strotsky, Siberia, into a peasant family. He was initially a worker. In 1954, he began studying cinema in Moscow at the VGIK (National Institute of Cinematography), under the direction of Mikhail Romm. In 1958, he began a career as an actor in The Two Fyodors (M. Khoutziev). He appeared in about twenty films, and became very popular thanks to his natural and open style. An internationally renowned writer, he became a director, and often an actor, in his own works. Thus, in 1972 he filmed A Batons Romps/De Fil En Aiguille, in which he played, with his wife Lydia Fedoseieva, the role of a kolkhoz farmer on vacation on the Black Sea coast. His most famous role is in The Red Guelder (1973), where he plays a delinquent who tries to rebuild his life as a tractor driver in a kolkhoz.
In all his works, literary and filmed, his love of nature and his respect for human beings are expressed. He died prematurely in 1974, in Klietskaya (Ukraine) during the filming of the film They Fought for the Fatherland. His literary work has inspired many filmmakers: for example in 1977 Call Me to the Far-Off Lights by G. Lavrov and S. Lioubchine.
