Kira Muratova

Kira Georgievna Muratova (Kira Gheórghievna Muratova; Кира Георгиевна Муратова; Кіра Георгіївна Мура́това; née Korotkova, 5 November 1934 – 6 June 2018) was a Ukrainian award-winning film director, screenwriter and actress of Romanian/Jewish descent, known for her unusual directorial style. Muratova's films underwent a great deal of censorship in the Soviet Union, yet still Muratova managed to emerge as one of the leading figures in contemporary Cinema of Ukraine and Russian cinema and was able to build a very successful film career from 1960s onwards. She is People's Artist of Ukraine(1989); Academician of National Academy of Arts of Ukraine (1997). Laureate of the Shevchenko National Prize (1993) (in List of laureates at 1993 - No 12); Oleksandr Dovzhenko State Prize (2002). Muratova spent much of her artistic career in Odesa, creating most of her films at Odesa Film Studios. Her work has been described as possibly 'one of the most distinctive and singular oeuvres of cinematic world-making.' Kira Korotkova was born in 1934 in Soroca, Romania (present-day Moldova) to a Russian father and a Romanian mother (of Bessarabian Jewish origin). Her parents were both active communists and members of the Communist Party. Her father, Gheorghe Corotcov, Юрий Коротков (1907-1941), participated in the anti-fascist guerilla movement in World War II, was arrested by Romanian forces and shot after interrogation. After the war, Kira lived in Bucharest with her mother, Natalia Corotcov-Scurtu, was born Reznic, (1906—1981), a gynaecologist, who then pursued a government career in Socialist Romania. In 1959, Kira graduated from the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography in Moscow, specializing in directing. Upon graduation Korotkova received a director position with the Odesa Film Studio in Odesa, a port city at the Black Sea near to her native Bessarabia. She directed her first professional film in 1961 and worked with the studio until a professional conflict made her to move to Leningrad in 1978.