Emil Loteanu

Emil Loteanu
Emil Loteanu, Soviet-era Moldovan filmmaker
Born	Emil Vladimirovich Loteanu (1936-11-06)November 6, 1936 Clocuşna, Bessarabia, Romania
Died	18 March 2003(2003-03-18) (aged 66) Moscow, Moscow Oblast, Russia
Occupation(s)	Director, screenwriter, poet
Years active	1959–1997
Spouse	Galina Belyayeva

Emil Loteanu (November 6, 1936 – April 18, 2003) was a Soviet film director born in Clocuşna, Moldova(then Romania). He moved to Moscow in his early life. His best known films are Lăutarii, Gypsies Are Found Near Heaven, A Hunting Accident and Anna Pavlova.

Life and career

2004 Moldovan stamp

1995 Moldovan stamp

Emil Vladimirovich Loteanu was born on November 6, 1936 in the Bessarabian village Clocuşna (now Ocniţa District Moldova). The Lotyanu ancestry has Ukrainian origin, the original name was Lototskii.

His paternal ancestors were from Bukovina. After the annexation of Bessarabia to the Soviet Union, they moved to Bucharest. After the death of his father and losing contact with his mother, who had moved to Romania, he lived his early life on the streets, sleeping in warehouses and hostels. Between 1953 and 1955, he studied at the actor's faculty of the Moscow Art Theatre. In 1962, he graduated from VGIK (workshop of Grigori Roshal and Y. Genik).

Between 1952 and 1954, he worked as an actor at the Moscow Pushkin Drama Theatre. From 1962 to 1973 he worked as a director at the studio Moldova-Film where he made his narrative feature film debut with the heroic and revolutionary film Wait for us at dawn (1963). In 1966, Emil Loteanu directed a motion picture about the Moldavian shepherds titled Red Meadows. He was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union since the year 1968. In his cinematic poem Lăutarii (1971) the director depicted the life of folk musicians. The film's music was scored by Eugene Doga and was the beginning for their long collaboration. The film won the Silver Shell at the San Sebastián International Film Festival.

Since 1973 Loteanu worked at the studio Mosfilm. Film adaptation of Maxim Gorky's Gypsies Are Found Near Heaven, film adaptation of Anton Chekhov's A Hunting Accident and the biographical film Anna Pavlova, dedicated to the life of the great Russian ballerina brought him great popularity. In 1976 the film Gypsies Are Found Near Heaven won the Grand Prix – the "Golden Shell" – at the International Film Festival in San Sebastian. A waltz by Eugene Doga from the 1978 film A Hunting Accident became world famous.

One of the producers of his 1983 film Anna Pavlova was Michael Powell. The film was a co-production between Britain and the Soviet Union and featured American director Martin Scorsese in a cameo role.

In 1979, Emil Loteanu married actress Galina Belyayeva who starred in his films A Hunting Accident and Anna Pavlova. Their marriage was a stormy one and lasted five years. They had one child.

In the late 1980s, he returned to "Moldova-Film" and worked on Moldovan television, where he made a film adaption of poem Mihai Eminescu Luceafarul. Between 1987 and 1992, he was President of the Union of Cinematographers of Moldova. He taught courses for theater actors at the Chisinau Institute of Arts.

In 1998, he staged the play "Unconditionally Yours, Antosha Chekhonte" based on Chekhov's "The Bear" and "Wedding" at the Moscow Art Theatre named after M. Gorky. He is an author of several collections of poems and short stories, scripts of his films. He is also an author of poetry for the film The Eighth Wonder of the World (1981).

For twelve years he was trying to get funding to make films. When Loteanu at long last got financing for his film project Yar he passed away, leaving the project unfinished. He died from cancer on April 18, 2003, in Moscow, at the age of 66. Galina Belaeva and his doctors hid the diagnosis from him. He was buried at the Vagankovsky cemetery in Moscow.

Director Emil Loteanu while working on the film "Lautarii", Moldova-film.

Filmography

• Bolshaya gora (1959) – director
• Zhil-byl malchik (1960) aka There Was a Young Boy – director
• Zhdite nas na rassvete (1963) aka Wait for Us at Dawn – director
• Krasnye polyany (1966) – writer/director
• Freska na belom (1967) – director
• Eto mgnovenie (1968) – director
• Akademik Tarasevich (1970) – director
• Lăutarii (1971) aka Fiddlers – writer/director
• Ekho goryachey doliny (1974) aka Their Torrid Valleys – director
• Tabor ukhodit v nebo (1975) aka Queen of the Gypsies – writer/director
• Moy laskovyy i nezhnyy zver (1978) aka A Hunting Accident – writer/director
• Anna Pavlova (1983) aka A Woman for All Time – writer/director, actor (the manager of cabaret)
• Luceafărul (1987) aka The Morning Star – writer/director
• Vdvoyom na grani vremeni (1989) – writer
• Skorlupa (1993) aka The Shell – director

See also

• Moldova-Film
• Mosfilm

External links

• Emil Loteanu at IMDb
• Emil Loteanu at AllMovie
• Emil Loteanu at the TCM Movie Database