Director,
Writer

Born 1930, USSR

 

Died 1996

Vytautas ZALAKEVIСIUS

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Витаутас Prano ЖАЛАКЯВИЧЮС

Vytautas ZALAKEVIСIUS

Also : Vytautas Žalakevičius / JALAKEVICIUS

Biography

Born April 14, 1930 in Kaunas, Lithuania, died November 12, 1996 in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Lithuanian film director and screenwriter.
People's Artist of the RSFSR (1980).
People's Artist of the Lithuanian SSR (1981).

From 1948 to 1950, he studied at the University of Kaunas. In 1956, he graduated with a degree in filmmaking from the VGIK (Lithuanian Commonwealth Film Institute), in the workshop of M.E. Chiaureli. For his graduation project, he directed the short film "The Drowned Man" (1957, based on a short story by P. Tsvirka). This film already demonstrated Žalakevičius's interest in Lithuania's historical past, its national literature, and the traditions of its worldview. Although Žalakevičius himself did not subsequently adapt any works of Lithuanian literature for the screen, he wrote numerous screenplays for other directors.

But the director did not limit himself to Lithuania. He made films about political metamorphoses in Latin America (“That Sweet Word - Freedom!”, 1973, Main Prize at the Moscow Film Festival; “Centaurs”, 1979), and screened works of world literature in which the analysis of human passions is combined with the revelation of the underlying reasons for people’s behavior in purely private life or in their socio-political incarnation (“Accident”, 1974, based on F. Dürrenmatt; “The Story of a Stranger”, 1981, based on A.P. Chekhov; “The Tale of the Inextinguishable Moon”, 1990, screenplay based on the short story by B.A. Pilnyak, directed by E.V. Tsymbal; “The Beast Emerging from the Sea”, 1992, based on the short story “The Flood” by E.I. Zamyatin). Sometimes plagued by feelings of dissatisfaction, Žalakevičius tended toward self-deprecation ("Excuse Me, Please," 1983) or a more dramatic vision of a life gone wrong (screenplay for the film "Confession of His Wife" by A. Grikevičius, 1984).

Artistic director of the Lithuanian Film Studio from 1961 to 1975 and throughout the 1980s, he made a significant contribution to the development of the national film school. From 1974 to 1980, Žalakevičius lived in Moscow, worked at Mosfilm, and taught at the Higher Courses in Screenwriting.

In the history of cinema, Žalakevičius will be remembered as the creator of the celebrated Lithuanian film, "Nobody Wanted to Die" (1966, USSR State Prize in 1967). The adventure elements and ideological overtones of this dramatic tale, set in a post-war Lithuanian village at a time when the Soviet regime was supposedly annihilating the "forest brothers," do not diminish the film's ambiguous and historically ambivalent scope. The initial contradiction between the personal and the social, the individual and the system, acquires an insoluble existential dimension in Žalakevičius's work. This film propelled several Lithuanian actors onto the national stage: Donatas Banionis, Regimantas Adomaitis, Juozas Budraitis, Laimonas Noreika, as well as cinematographer Jonas Gricius.

Commentaries

- Vytautas Zalakevicius , Joël CHAPRON, 1996, Le Monde