Alexander Gelman: biography and creativity

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:48

Gelman Alexander Isaakovich is a famous poet, prose writer, screenwriter, playwright, as well as an active public figure and politician.

Biography

The famous playwright and screenwriter Alexander Gelman was born on October 25, 1933 at a small station in the Kingdom of Romania, which now belongs to Moldova.

The childhood years of Alexander Isaakovich were tragic. Shuni's parents, as he was called in childhood, tried to keep their children out of trouble, but they seemed to follow them. At the beginning of the war, the family of Gelman Isaac Davidovich was exiled to the Bershad ghetto in Transnistria. The entire Jewish family of prisoners Gelman went to the place of their imprisonment on foot, but since the conditions of this death march were unbearable, the grandmother died on the way, and then the writer's younger brother.

But those who survived also had a hard time, as the conditions in the ghetto were terrible. Soon the mother of the future writer and screenwriter also died. In 1942, Manya Shaevna Gelman died, a little short of liberation.

It is known that almost the entire Gelman family, which consisted of fourteen people, died. Only Alexander Gelman and his father were able to free themselves in 1944.

When the war ended, Alexander togetherwith his surviving father returned to their native places. Here the boy studied at school for another three years, and after graduating he entered the vocational technical school of knitters in Chernivtsi in 1948.

After graduating from this training in 1951, Gelman entered an evening school, as he realized that he would need education in the future. To have the means to live, he worked part-time at the Lvov hosiery factory. Studying at the evening school gave Alexander the opportunity, after graduating in 1952, to enter the military-political school, which was located in Lvov. In 1954, he graduated from the department of ground forces.

Start in employment

After graduating from the Lviv School, Alexander Gelman in 1854 went to serve in the army. In six years, he rose from a senior lieutenant to the commander of a unit of the Black Sea Fleet, and then a separate unit of the military communications center of the Pacific Fleet.

But already in 1960, Gelman completed his military career and moved to live in Chisinau. In this city, he entered the well-known plant "Elektrotochpribor". Working on it as a milling machine, Alexander studied for three years at the University of Chisinau at the correspondence department. After that, he moved to Kirishi and got a job at the Glavzapstroy trust as a dispatcher, where he worked on the construction of a special oil refinery. And in 1966 there was a new move. This time, Alexander Gelman, whose photo is presented in this article, went to Leningrad.

Dramaturgy

In 1966, having movedin Leningrad, Alexander Isaakovich became a correspondent in the newspaper. This served as an excellent start for transferring everything that he saw and observed into his works in the future. Already in 1970, Gelman was elected to the trade union committee of playwrights, in which until 1976 he was an active participant.

It is known that Alexander Isaakovich began to publish his first essays and stories in 1950, when he was still serving in Kamchatka. Later, in 1970, many of his plays were staged at the Moscow Art Theater. The following plays are considered the most famous: “Feedback”, “Alone with everyone”, “Zinulya”, “Bench” and others.

In 1994, the Moscow Art Theater named after A. Chekhov became interested in the plays of Alexander Gelman. On his stage, the play "Mishin's Anniversary" was staged, which, like the rest of Alexander Isaakovich's dramatic works, touches on acute and topical topics. In the future, the plays of the popular and famous playwright A. I. Gelman were staged by many theaters of the world. It is known that more than thirty countries saw performances based on the dramatic works of Alexander Isaakovich Gelman.

But in the years when perestroika began in the country, Gelman stopped writing his plays, and went into journalism. He returned to dramaturgy only in 2000, when he published two of his poetry collections.

Cinema

In 1970, the famous prose writer and playwright Alexander Gelman moved from dramaturgy to film scripts. At first he wrote scripts only for documentaries, and soon togetherwith his wife, Tatyana Kaletskaya, created the feature film Night Shift. And then they co-wrote several more scripts for feature films.

The playwright and screenwriter Alexander Gelman gained fame and popularity only in 1974, when the film "Premiya", created according to his script, was released. Later, according to the same scenario, the play “Minutes of one meeting” will be staged, which will first be staged at the Bolshoi Theater, and then at the Moscow Art Theater.

To date, Alexander Isaakovich has already written more than thirty scripts, on which many wonderful films were shot. Many well-known film directors and screenwriters became its co-authors, including Pavel Movchanov, Roman Kachanov, and Vladimir Menshov.

Public and political activities

Alexander Isaakovich Gelman, after moving to the capital in 1990, was elected a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU. But two years later he was removed from the membership, as he himself left the party.

It is known that Gelman has always led an active social life. In 1993, he signed the sensational "Letter of the 42s", and in 2001 - a letter in support of the NTV television channel, in 2014 - a letter from the Union of Russian Cinematographers to Ukrainian colleagues who condemned the Russian military intervention.

During perestroika, Gelman became interested in politics. Alexander Isaakovich became co-chairman of the board of founders of the well-known and popular at that time newspaper Moskovskiye Novosti. On its pagespublished his articles in which he reviewed political news. Therefore, already in 1989, Gelman was honorably elected from the Russian Union of Cinematographers as a People's Deputy of the Soviet Union. Was on good business terms with both Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin.

Private life

Alexander Gelman, whose biography is eventful, was married twice. His second wife, Kaletskaya Tatyana Pavlovna, always supported the author and throughout her life was his excellent assistant. The famous screenwriter and playwright has two sons. Marat was born in the first marriage in 1960, and Pavel in 1967.