Abram Room

Directing · Writing · Production · Acting

Народився 28 червня 1894, Vilna, Russian Empire [now Vilnius, Lithuania]

Abram Matveyevich Room (Russian: Абрам Матвеевич Роом; real name Abram Mordkhelevich Rom, Russian: Абрам Мордхелевич Ром; 28 June 1894, Vilna – 26 July 1976, Moscow) was a Soviet film director and screenwriter. In 1914-1917 he studied at the St. Petersburg Bekhterev Psychoneurological Research Institute, between 1917 and 1922 at the medical faculty of Saratov State University. From 1917 he worked in Saratov in the arts department as professor and rector of the Higher theatrical art workshops. Since 1923 he was the director of Vsevolod Meyerhold’s Theatre of the Revolution in Moscow, director and teacher of the Higher Pedagogical School of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee in the Kremlin. Since 1924 he was the director at the studios Goskino, Sovkino, Soyuzkino. Since 1936 he was director at the studio Mosfilm. In 1925-1934 he taught at VGIK as a senior lecturer. Room's best known film is Bed and Sofa (1927) after a screenplay by Lev Kuleshov and Viktor Shklovsky. In the film, a woman who is married to a construction worker has an affair with their lodger. The film tracks the evolution of a housewife into a strong liberated woman, which was very unusual for its time. Another notable title is The Ghost That Never Returns (1929) The first movie he directed was The Vodka Chase in 1924. He directed the first talking picture in the Soviet Union, the 1930 documentary The Plan for Great Works. The other films he directed were Traitor (1926), Ruts (1928), Criminals (1933), Squadron No. 5 (1939), Invasion (1945), In the Mountains of Yugoslavia (1946), School for Scandal (1952), The Garnet Bracelet (1964), Late Flowers (1969), and A Man Before His Time (1971). Cited in the German book Texte zur Theorie des Films (Albersmeier 1998, p.304) [texts about theory of film]: "A. Room, declared opponent of the concept of Sergei Eisenstein, postulated in his essay Moi kinoubezhdeniya (My beliefs of film) in: Soviet screen, 1926, m. 8, p. 5: Prior importance in film must be the living human... [in german: Vorrangige Bedeutung kommt im Film dem lebendigen Menschen zu...], exactly that what Eisenstein declined."

Фільмографія

• 1978Enemies — Writer
• 1973A Man Before His Time — Director, Writer
• 1970Belated Flowers — Director, Writer, Music Score Producer
• 1965The Garnet Bracelet — Screenplay, Director
• 1958On the Count's Ruins — Producer
• 1956Heart Beats Again — Director
• 1956The Mystery of the Eternal Night — Producer
• 1953Silvery Dust — Director
• 1952The School of Scandal — Director
• 1949Court of Honor — Director
• 1946In the Mountains of Yugoslavia — Director
• 1945The Invasion — Director
• 1942Our Girls — Director
• 1940Wind from East — Director
• 1939Squadron No. 5 — Director
• 1935A Severe Young Man — Director
• 1930Plan for Great Works — Director, Writer
• 1930Sound Team Program No. 1 — Director
• 1930The Ghost That Never Returns — Director
• 1928Potholes — Director, Writer
• 1927Bed and Sofa — Director, Writer
• 1927Jews on the Land — Director, Writer
• 1927Поцілунок Мері Пікфорд
• 1926The Bay of Death — Director
• 1926The Traitor — Director
• 1926The Wind — Screenplay
• 1924The Race for Moonshine — Director