Arkady Kogan biography

Yes, I lived between the two countries for a couple of years. I perfectly understood that the status that I had in Russia - and for many years I worked on Channel One as the main director of the directorate - will not be here. When we started, we were engaged in documentary educational cinema. But by the time I decided to leave, this cinema died, and, in principle, all three directorates-socio-political, documentary and popular science-merged into one: entertainment.

Documentary cinema ceased to enlighten only to entertain. In general, I left without much regret. A complex country for life. One of the main problems is housing rental. In our family, it has been decided: due to the fact that we have housing in Moscow, we rent it - and we can rent it here. But in this situation, you need to do something, look for work. We are people who are accustomed to work.

The man from the screen Arkady Kogan was born in Novosibirsk in the year. He worked as a designer, artist-winner of the Novosibirsk Drama Theater "Red Torch". From the year he began to work on television. In years-the chief director of the Popular Popular programs of the first channel. From the year he has been teaching at the faculty of directing the Moscow Institute of Television and Radio Broadcasting Ostankino.

In November, he was repatriated to Israel. In the year, he launched the global project "History of the Family". The work of the wife, and she was the chief editor on Channel One, now it is that she completely devoted herself to the authors' daughter, because of which in many ways we arrived. In addition, having ceased to make films, she remained in the profession.

I switched to blogs, began to write a lot. Now Zhenya’s nickname “Victor Hugo” - it is under this name that one of her articles wanders over the Internet. People, apparently, considered it impossible that some Evgenia Shustikova writes such texts, and attribute them to the pen of a great writer. Well, yes, this is an exit to another qualitative level. In general, Zhenya, as my editor was there, remained for them.

The editor of not only films, but my whole life. I can quote our favorite document. When Zhenya and I were going to get married - and for both of us this is the second marriage - we composed a letter on my behalf: “I found the love of my whole life. She is 15 years younger than me, 10 centimeters higher. She swears obscenities, drinks cognac, but she has a three -room apartment on the street guarded by the Federal Security Service.

” Our dating experience is much more than family. Zhenya was the editor of the channel, then she knocked out into the chief editors, all this time I was the main director of the directorate. I forced to redo the films that they brought us a hundred times. I was married, she was married, no one took anyone away - this is not a service novel. Just at the moment when Zhenya's family life ended, I was also free and thought: “Why not?

Eight years have passed since then. I am an architect by first education, and a friend gave me good advice - in parallel with the search for work related to the cinema, to learn AutoCAD. I obediently mastered this architectural program. But the second time in my life I realized: not mine, I can’t do what I do not like. After graduating from the Academy with a red diploma, he did not work for a day in the project bureau.

He went to the art fund, then entered the VGIK and began to make a movie - what he wanted to always do. But Zhenya and I came up with Inna Lesina, a very interesting project “History of the Family”. The story of almost every family deserves a small film. And considering that we live in the media era, then if something is not removed, it simply does not exist.

Huge albums of photographs, like video cassettes, are dusting in family archives. And what we came up with is incredibly interesting and, by the way, inexpensively: people may well afford to have their own film. Now I’m shooting a large project - work for a year, end in the spring of the year. As a superstitious person, I do not want to talk about what has not yet been done, I will only say that it is completely absorbed in work.

As my colleague said, directors of documentary cinema - a priori bad people. They should allow themselves that an ordinary person cannot afford. After all, you need to climb into someone else's life, and this is sometimes fraught with unpleasant consequences. Yes, but - to a certain limit. If I understand that my intervention in the life of the hero will cause him trouble, I include restrictions.

And work on the current film is very interesting to me. Filming of different people, amazing acquaintances; I work everywhere - from Germany and Russia to the United States. I happened to remove the Prime Minister of Israel.

For a person living for two years in the country, this is not bad, I think. Everything is very simple. They send me a link from the Russian Academy of Cinema, and I watch with interest the films that came out in Russia. In general, there are always few good films, but they are. I cannot now name those that I like: I am a member of the expert council, I have to vote and have no right to announce, for which I vote.

If you understand why you arrived, and, like a frog, you beat your paws - there will be sour cream. I was not going to move anywhere, the initiative completely belonged to my wife. I persuaded her to go.Just see, meet. They returned to Moscow, and Zhenya said: “What are we doing here? Why don't we live in Israel? Apparently, all the same, genes make themselves felt.

I never strove for a Jewish theme never. Being a little boy with the name Arkady atypical for the USSR and with an even more strange surname Kogan, I always somehow differed from others. I honestly admit: in my ten years I wanted to become a blond, blue -eyed and snub -haired Petei Ivanov. It didn't work out. I will not say that I was an anti -Semite, but did not move towards Zionism.

Now I’m shooting what is connected with the topic of departure from the Soviet Union, but before I have not been in this topic. The cousin left for X, however, in Europe he moved and went to America. But all the conversations on this topic did not cause me any patriotic feelings. My friend, a brilliant pianist Yasha ZISIS, played me the anthem of Israel and waited for my eyes to pour from my eyes.

I did not wait. But after the end of the VGIK, I received a proposal from religious Jews to make a movie about their educational activities. Then, in e, in Moscow a lot of hungry opened. I began to shoot and at the same time enter this topic, learn something about the people to whom I belong. Probably, I should be ashamed that I myself was not interested in this: most likely, I behaved wrong.

But now I am absolutely in the subject, it is close to me and causes emotions. Yes, of course, I feel like a Jew. Especially - having arrived in Israel. About the previous one, “Free love! Even before I came to the Channel One, I made a lot of films, millions of spectators watched them. For example, they still watch my film about the family of the musicians of the Ovechkin who hung up the plane, "no one wanted to kill." A very dramatic, tragic story - in fact, a documentary blockbuster.

I also filmed my own author's program on the channel "Russia", it was called "Person." Unlike the rest of the “team 2” - Berman, Grandowrev or Ivan Dykhovichny - I did not appear in the frame. I set the condition: I am making an author’s program, but not a “face of a face”. I love to be behind the camera. And the program was rated, two or three years went to the “team 2”. The wife remained in the profession, switching to the Internet.

I had wonderful heroes: Andrey Smirnov, Leah Akhedzhakova. It turned out funny with Ringo Starr: he did not want to act and ran away all the time. Mikhail Schweitzer, for example. Thanks to this, he simply made friends with him.