Alexander Gelman is one of the famous playwrights of the Soviet era. According to his script, several documentaries and feature films were shot, including the famous film "Ksenia, Fyodor's beloved wife" with Stanislav Lyubshin and Alla Meshcheryakova in the lead roles.
Biography: early years
Alexander (real name - Shunya) Isaakovich Gelman was born on October 25, 1933 in the small Romanian village of Donduseni. Now it is a city located on the territory of Moldova. The future playwright was born into a Jewish family. Mother and father were ordinary people, without higher education. Since childhood, Alexander spoke three languages: Russian, Romanian and Yiddish.
The early years of Gelman fell on a harsh wartime. When the Germans captured Donduseni, his family was sent to the ghetto. It was located in the town of Bershad, to which the column of Jews walked for more than two weeks.
In the ghetto, Alexander's family lived in a cold and damp basement. Soon he lost 12 relatives, including his mother, grandmother and the youngest, still a nursing brother. The Nazis starved people and experimented with them.
Only he and his father survived until liberation. Subsequently, Alexander will write a book of memoirs "Childhood and Death" about his stay in the fascist ghetto.
After the war, he and his father returned to their native Donduseni. After graduating from school, Gelman moved to Ukrainian Chernivtsi, where he entered the school. Before the army, he managed to work as a machine tool adjuster at a hosiery factory in the city of Lvov. Alexander served on the Kamchatka Peninsula and in Sevastopol.
After the army, Gelman got a job as a milling machine operator at the Electrotochpribor plant in Chisinau. Three years later, he moved to Leningrad, where he subsequently plunged headlong into creativity.
Career
In 1966, Gelman got a job as a correspondent for two newspapers at once, which wrote about the construction site. In parallel, he began to take an interest in drama. In 1970, Alexander joined the trade union committee of playwrights of Leningrad.
At that time, he wrote the script for the film "Night Shift", which was shot at Lenfilm. His wife Tatyana Kaletskaya was its co-author.
In 1974, the film "Ksenia, Fyodor's Beloved Wife" was shot based on the script by Gelman. Wife Tatyana again acted as a co-author. The film was successful, it was even awarded at the All-Union competition.
In 1975, Gelman created the first theatrical play called "Minutes of one meeting." It was staged by Tovstonogov himself on the stage of the Leningrad Bolshoi Drama Theater. A year later, Mikhail Efremov, who was heading the Moscow Art Theater at that time, also staged it. Gelman was the favorite playwright of this theater for a long time.
He wrote one of his last plays in 2000. After that, Alexander focused on scripts for documentary films.
Personal life
Alexander Gelman was married twice. He met his first wife in Chisinau. There, on December 24, 1960, his first son, Marat, was born. Now he is one of the famous collectors and gallery owners in Russia. Marat also managed to work as deputy general director of Channel One.
Gelman met his second wife in Leningrad. This time, his chosen one turned out to be a colleague - screenwriter Tatyana Kaletskaya. It was in co-authorship with her that he wrote scripts for a number of films. Their wedding took place in 1966. A year later, a second son was born - Pavel. HE followed in the footsteps of famous parents, becoming a screenwriter.
