Boris Berman is a Russian journalist, TV presenter, TEFI award winner. Together with his colleague Ildar Zhandarev, he created and hosted television programs "Paragraph", "Kiss on the Diaphragm", "Interesting Movie", "Without Protocol", "Looking at Night". Despite the impressive list of projects, cinema, art and creative personalities have always been the subject of Boris Berman's professional activities.
Biography and career before television
Boris Isaakovich Berman was born on August 15, 1948 in Moscow. In 1971 he graduated with honors from the television department at the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University.
Berman began his professional career with work at the Novosti Press Agency, the largest news agency in the USSR. In the late 1980s, he took up the post of deputy editor-in-chief of the weekly printed edition "Screen and Scene". In parallel, in 1986-1989, the journalist continued to cooperate with the Novosti agency, advising on film issues and doing reviews on this topic.
In 1991, Berman got a job on Russian state television. In 2006, on the air of the program "Dithyramb", broadcast on the radio station "Echo of Moscow", he spoke about the circumstances of his arrival on the TV screen. Leonid Parfenov and his wife Elena Chekalova helped him in this. They met while working for Berman as freelance writers at a news agency.
According to Boris Isaakovich, due to the hard work in the newspaper "Screen and Scene" he started having health problems. And Elena Chekalova invited him to try his hand at television. So Berman met Anatoly Grigorievich Lysenko - at that time the general director of the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company. At first he worked in the studio "K-2", eventually becoming one of its founders.
While still working in the newspaper "Screen and Scene", Boris Berman met Ildar Zhandarev. He worked here as a correspondent and editor. When the need arose in television activities to recruit a reliable team, Berman invited Zhandarev to join it.
Television career
The first joint project of Boris Berman and Ildar Zhandarev was the program "Kiss on the diaphragm", then the programs "Paragraph", "Plot" followed. In 1995, the creative tandem of Berman and Zhandarev received the TEFI award in the Best Art Program nomination. Their program dedicated to the film "White Sun of the Desert" was highly appreciated. In addition to creative tasks, Berman headed the directorate of RTR-Film at the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company.
However, his cooperation with the VGTRK media holding ended in 1999, when Boris Isaakovich switched to the young promising channel NTV. At the new place of work, he and Ildar Zhandarev began to produce a series of films "Interesting Cinema". They continued to shoot "simple human stories based on the example of very difficult people" on the TV-6 channel, where they settled in 2001 after the well-known events with the change of ownership on NTV.
On TV-6, Boris Berman also created an interactive program “No Protocol”. When the TV-6 channel was taken off the air, its employees continued their activities on the new TVS channel, which existed until 2003.
Since 2003, Berman came to work on Channel One. At first, he focused on filming new issues of the Interesting Cinema cycle. As part of this project, in 2004-2014, the TV presenter annually filmed the program "Interesting Cinema in Berlin", timed to coincide with the Berlin Film Festival. He also took part in the festival life of the Moscow Film Festival: in 2004-2013 he led the opening and closing ceremonies of the Moscow International Film Festival.
In 2006, Zhandarev and Berman created the program "Looking at Night". In terms of its format, it was somewhat similar to another brainchild of the presenters - "Without a Protocol". Famous actors, musicians, and cultural figures were invited to the studio, as before. The program was broadcast live. The changes, in comparison with the program “No Protocol”, affected only the political sphere. A ban was imposed on politics on Channel One. The name "Looking at Night" was due to the air time - around midnight.
The first guest of the new TV show was director Nikita Mikhalkov. The program is still being released. Here are just a few of the stars invited to it:
- Zurab Sotkilava;
- Lyudmila Gurchenko;
- Vladimir Vasiliev;
- Valentin Yudashkin;
- Oleg Tabakov;
- Fedor Bondarchuk;
- Edward Radzinsky;
- Inna Churikova;
- Galina Volchek and many others.
Over more than ten years of history, the program "Looking at Night" was attended by over two hundred famous personalities from the world of sports, show business, cinema, literature. The conversation between the presenters and the guest is usually based on the separation of two points of view. Zhandarev is responsible for the romantic vision of the world, while Berman is more prone to sound skepticism. In all interviews, the tandem hosts emphasize that they will never ask offensive or tactless questions to their guests. Both are in favor of intelligent communication.
The program “Looking at Night” in 2008 and 2009 won the TEFI Prize in the “Interviewer” nomination.
In an interview published in the newspaper Izvestia in 2001, Boris Berman spoke about his understanding of the television profession: “Not a single work of art gives answers, it raises questions. And even more so television. True, the biggest mistake people make on television is to think that they are making art. Art is created according to different laws, and television is a technological production. It creates an array of the most reliable information for future historians."
Participation in public organizations and associations:
- Union of Cinematographers of the Russian Federation;
- Union of Journalists of Russia;
- Nika Academy of Cinematic Arts;
- The Academy of Russian Television Foundation;
- Public Council of the Russian Jewish Congress.
Personal life
The personal life of Boris Berman has always remained behind the scenes. It is only known that the TV presenter has never been married and never had children. At all events, he invariably appears in the company of his colleague Ildar Zhandarev, who is also single and childless. This fact gave rise to many rumors about unconventional relationships between the presenters. Although Berman and Zhandarev themselves joke that they do not recognize them individually, so you have to always stick together.
In some interviews, you can find a mention of Zhandarev's wife, whose name is Anna. But whether they are together is still unknown. At least, they were not noticed in joint appearances.
Returning to the topic of the relationship between Berman and Zhandarev, some fans are sure that they have been living together for a long time. Someone even claims that colleagues are not shy about showing feelings for each other in public. In any case, there is always a halo of rumors around public people, but only he himself knows how things really are in Boris Berman's personal life.
