Soviet director, Larissa Chepitko (1938 – 1979) achieved recognition with her film Ascension . Despite works censored by the Soviet authorities, she established herself as a very talented filmmaker.
A separated family
Larissa Chepitko was born on January 6, 1938 in Artemovsk (now Bakhmout) in Ukraine. She and her parents' two other children are raised by her mother, a teacher; Larissa is only a little girl when her father leaves her family, divorces, then goes into battle when the Second World War breaks out.
Later, Larissa would testify:“My father fought throughout the war. The war is one of my most powerful early memories. I remember the feeling of life turned upside down, the family separated. I remember the hunger and how our mother and we three children were evacuated. The impression of a global calamity certainly left an indelible mark on my childish mind.
Scorching heat
In 1954, Larissa graduated from high school. Barely 16 years old, she moved to Moscow to join the Moscow Film Institute. She studied there for 18 months with the filmmaker Alexandre Dovjenko; a lesson of which she would later say:"Dovzhenko taught us to remain true to ourselves, to trust our feelings, to defend our conceptions. » .
Larissa then studied at the Higher State Cinematographic Institute in Moscow, a few years before the Kyrgyz filmmaker Dinara Assanova who also trained there. In 1963, she graduated with her first feature, Scorching Heat (Znoi ), filmed at Kyrgyzfilm studios. The film is inspired by the short story The Eye of the Camel, written by the Soviet writer Chinguiz Aïtmatov. Kemel, a young graduate, leaves to cultivate land in the isolated steppes of Central Asia. Her first film already tackles themes related to loneliness and isolation, like those that the filmmaker experienced in childhood. The work has won several awards at festivals.
During the editing of her film, Larissa is assisted by another student of the school, filmmaker Elem Klimov. They married the same year and had a son, Anton, ten years later.
Censored by the authorities
In The Wings , his second film released in 1966, Larissa is interested in Soviet airwomen engaged in the Red Army during the Second World War. The main character, Nadezhda Petroukhina, is a decorated former airwoman, struggling to return to civilian life, to communicate with her daughter and her contemporaries, and to reconcile her past with her present. At the time, the film aroused controversy by showing a daughter in conflict with her mother, and a lost soul war heroine.
In 1967, she shot the second part of a series produced by three filmmakers, The Beginning of an Unknown Century , as part of the fiftieth anniversary of the Revolution; its component, The Land of Electricity , shows the difficulties of a young engineer who tries to bring electricity to a poor rural village. Deeming her vision of the Revolution too negative, the authorities banned Larissa's film. It will not be screened until twenty years later, years after the filmmaker's death.
In 1971, his only color film You and me focuses on the fates of two surgeons, one of whom leaves everything to settle in Siberia. A critic of consumerism, he received a favorable reception at the Venice International Film Festival.
The Ascension
His latest film, The Ascension (1977), earned him recognition. Adapted from a novel by Vassil Bykov, the work takes place during the Second World War and explores the fate of two Soviet partisans who fell into the hands of the Germans and must face their fate. According to Larissa, her film "is a spiritual journey towards humanity, towards the future of the human being that is hidden in these two characters" . The work won a Golden Bear at the 1977 Berlinale, and earned its author an invitation to serve on the jury for the following edition. Larissa is emerging as one of the most promising filmmakers of her generation.
She will not have the opportunity to produce a new masterpiece. In 1979, when she was scouting filming locations for an adaptation of the novel Les Adieux à Matiora by Valentin Raspoutine, Larissa Chepitko dies in a car accident at the age of 41. It is her husband Elem who will finish the film; the following year, he directed Larissa, a brief biography of his wife, a very talented but little-known filmmaker.