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Oleksandr Horsky (film production organizer, director of the Yalta Film Factory)

Oleksandr Horsky (24 August 1898, Oleksandriia — 1983, Kyiv) — a Ukrainian film production organizer and theater figure, director of the Yalta Film Factory, and later of the Kyiv and Odesa Film Studios. Father of the dissident artist Alla Horska, whose family settled in Crimea (Yalta) in the mid-1920s.

Overview

The life path of Oleksandr Horsky is an example of a successful career as a Soviet film organizer that, despite this, gave Ukrainian culture an iconic figure of resistance — his daughter Alla. A native of Oleksandriia, he went through World War I, worked in the theaters of Vinnytsia and Zhytomyr, and founded the artistic association "Makhudram". In the mid-1920s he settled in Yalta, where his daughter Alla was born in 1929, and from 1931 he headed the Yalta Film Factory. His career advancement brought him to leadership positions in Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv, and Odesa. Over several decades in the film industry, Horsky lived through two key technological transformations of the field (the transition to sound and to color film), established the production capacities of the Kyiv Film Studio, and gave a start to the careers of director Marlen Khutsiev and the film "Spring on Zarechna Street". He was fated to outlive both of his children.

Key Details / Subtopics

  • Early years and theater: Born on 24 August 1898 in Oleksandriia, where he graduated from a trade school. A participant in World War I (he was wounded). In 1918–1920 he was an assistant director at Ukrainian theaters in Vinnytsia and Zhytomyr. In 1922, together with Yurii Filianskyi and Leonid Chernov, he founded the Ukrainian artistic association "Makhudram" (Workshop of Artistic Drama).
  • Family: His wife Olena Davydivna came from a wealthy peasant family from a village near Kremenchuk. They married in 1919; Oleksandr adopted her son Arsen (who was killed in battle in April 1943 on the Leningrad Front). His daughter is the artist and dissident Alla Horska, born in 1929 in Yalta.
  • Crimean period (Yalta): The family settled in Yalta in the mid-1920s. From 1931 to 1932, Oleksandr Horsky was the director of the Yalta Film Factory. In the 1920s, the Yalta Film Studio was subordinate to the All-Ukrainian Cinema-Photo Committee, and from 1930 it was transferred to the "Vostokfilm" trust, which united film studios from Crimea and the Volga region to Central Asia.
  • Career advancement (Moscow, Leningrad): In 1932 he was transferred to Moscow as head of production of the "Vostokfilm" trust. He then became deputy director and production director of the Leningrad Film Studio (1932–1941). A participant in the Soviet-Finnish War (1939–1940). In 1941 he led a group filming the movie "His Name Is Sukhe-Bator" in Mongolia.
  • Kyiv Film Studio (1943–1953): At the end of 1943, after evacuation to Alma-Ata, the family moved to Kyiv, where Horsky headed the film studio for ten years. Despite the postwar "low film output", through his efforts the significant production capacities of the Kyiv Film Studio were created.
  • Odesa Film Studio (1953–1961): His last senior position. It was Horsky who invited young directors Marlen Khutsiev and Feliks Mironer to the studio, which led to the creation of the film "Spring on Zarechna Street" (shot in Zaporizhzhia), which was seen by more than 30 million viewers in its first year of release.
  • Later years: In 1961 he retired; that same year his wife died. From 1963 to 1973 he was director of the Cinema Actor's Theater-Studio of the O. Dovzhenko Kyiv Film Studio, where he fostered the development of Ivan Mykolaychuk, Raisa Nedashkivska, Kostiantyn Stepankov, Borys Brondukov, Antonina Leftii, and others. He took part in two technical-organizational transformations of cinema — the transition to sound (1930s) and to color (1950s) film. He died in 1983 and is buried at the Berkovetske Cemetery in Kyiv. A lane in Oleksandriia is named in his honor.