Yuri Viktorovich Tarich was an outstanding and talented filmmaker and screenwriter, one of the founders of the Belarusian cinema. His creative fate is the fate of the artist, devoted his life to the service of the revolutionary ideals. In cinema he came out of the theater.
Background
Нis real name was Alekseyev. Yu.Tarich was born in Polatsk on 12 [24] January 1885. His life and artistic activities were connected with Belarus as well as with Russia. Poland, and Mongolia. The eldest son of the six children of an artillery officer, he lived for some time in Warsaw together with his parents and then moved to Moscow. Yu.Tarich died on February 21 1967 and was buried in Moscow.
Education
He moved to Moscow to study at the Law Faculty of Moscow University.
Career
In 1904, Yu.Tarich worked as a hospital attendant at a Red Cross hospital. In 1905-1907, for the participation in the revolutionary underground activities he was exiled to Silx;ria, to the village of Tara in the Tobolsk province (whence his pseudonym Tarich). Afterwards he worked at provincial Russian theatres. In 1914, he served in an artillery regiment as a gunner and in 1920, Yu. Tarich directed a military school students' theatre, where he staged ‘plays-chronicles’, jxjpular sketches, organized mass theatre shows in the Red Square.
Only in 1925, at the age of 40, he turned to cinematography. A very jxjpular at that time historical adventure film Wings of a Serf, produced by him in Russia, was about the young serf Xikishka who made a flying machine in the times of Ivan the Terrible. Critics compared the outstanding acting of Leonid Leonidov as the cruel tsar with the interpretation of Ivan by the German actor Konrad YVeidt in Paul Leni’s film Wachsfigurenkabinet (1925).The Wings of a Serf was the first Soviet film shown in Hollywood, in the Palace movie theatre, where it had a great success. The L’S National Viewers Committee inscribed it on the list of outstanding film productions of the world.
In 1926, Yu.Tarich made the first Belarusian film The Forest Story, a romantic adventure storv of the partisan messenger Hryshka. The events of the film took place in the 1920s. during the liberation of Belarus from the Polish occupation. The picture was shot in Pryluki, near Minsk, in the authentic surroundings of the events and with the participation of villagers who fought against the Polish troops during the Civil War. In 1929, Yu.Tarich shot the film Till Tomorrow. In the title he expressed his hope for the reunion of the Eastern and Western parts of Belarus, separated in 1919 and 10 years after the film was released, in 1939 that unification indeed occurred. In 1938, in The Eleventh of July Tarich continued to develop the historical theme anti narrated about the liberation of Minsk from the Polish occupation in 1919. During the Great Patriotic War, Yu.Tarich shot the story To the Mother’s Call for the film collection Belarusian Stories (1942). He made an important contribution to the development of Mongolia’s cinema. From 1943 to 1945, he headed the Mongol kino film studio, where he directed Heroes of the Steppe. After the war, he worked at the Moscow Studio of Popular Science Films.
Politics
In 1905 participated in the Warsaw military-revolutionary organization RSDLP, was exiled to Tobolsk province.
Personality
Founder of cinematography in Belarus and Mongolia, a man of great erudition, deep professional knowledge, hard and passionately, he taught the young to what he followed all his life in cinematografy - to serve high ideals of the Soviet art. As a Belgoskino director played an outstanding role in the formation of the ideological and artistic principles of cinematography of the country. Based on the novel Mikhas Charot he put the first Belarusian film "Forest Story", where he directed feats in the name of revolution, the ideals, the greatness of the struggle for the people's happiness. The theme of the revolution, which Tarich has devoted most of his works, was played in the movie "Until tomorrow." About the class battles abroad was discussed in a journalistic film "Hate".
Quotes from others about the person
"The largest figure of Belarusian Cinema of 1920s. He has created two works, much ahead in its artistic value the rest of the national film production of the time."