Stanislav Sergeyevich Govorukhin was a Soviet and Russian film director, actor, screenwriter, producer and politician. He was named People's Artist of Russia in 2006. His movies often featured detective or adventure plots.
Biography
Govorukhin was born in Berezniki, Sverdlovsk Oblast. His parents divorced before he was born. His father Sergei Georgievich Govorukhin came from Don Cossacks and was arrested as part of the decossackization genocide campaign started by Yakov Sverdlov. He had been exiled to Siberia where he died around 1938 at the age of 30. His mother Praskovya Afanasievna Glazkova was a tailor. She came from the Volga region, from a simple Russian family of a village school teacher. She raised Sergei and his sister Inessa by herself and died at the age of 53. Govorukhin started his career as a geologist in 1958. He then joined a television studio in Kazan and enrolled at the VGIK. During the Soviet period, Govorukhin became noted for his successful adaptations of adolescent classics, including Robinson Crusoe, Adventures of Tom Sawyer, In Search of the Castaways and Ten Little Niggers in 1987. Most of his Soviet movies were made at the Odessa Film Studio. He was good friends with Vladimir Vysotsky and directed three movies starring him – Vertical, White Explosion and The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed, one of the cult films of the late Soviet era. Several other of his films feature Visotsky's songs written as part of the soundtrack. Apart from directing, he also wrote screenplays and started in movies as an actor. Being a trained mountaineer, he usually performed all the stunts himself. He also dedicated several movies to mountaineering, most notably Vertical and White Explosion which became some of the first examples of this subgenre in the Soviet cinema. During the perestroika Govorukhin became less active at film making and more active in politics. He became one of the leaders of the Democratic Party of Russia. In 1990 he directed a much-publicised documentary highly critical of the Soviet society entitled We Can't Live Like This. Although his feature films were previously ignored by the critical establishment, this film won him the Nika Award for Best Director. It was at that time that Govorukhin released an extensive interview with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. By the start of the 2000s he returned to cinema, co-starring with Alisa Friendlich in the detective TV series Female Logic and releasing another revenge movie, The Rifleman of the Voroshilov Regiment. He directed a total of seven movies since then. In recent years he had been also actively working as a producer. Govorukhin died on 14 June 14, 2018 at the age of 82 following a long illness. He was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.
Govorukhin was married twice. He had one son from his first marriage — Sergey Govorukhin, a war correspondent, writer and director of documentary films who took part in different armed conflicts in Tajikistan, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and both Chechenwars between 1994 and 2005. In 1995 he was wounded by Chechen terrorists which resulted in one of his legs being amputated. Nevertheless, he continued his work. In 1998 he released one of the most acclaimed documentaries about the First Chechen War — Damned and Forgotten that was awarded with the Nika Award in 1998 as the best documentary. He also took part in several non-governmental organizations dedicated to helping disabled war veterans. In 2011 he survived a stroke and died several days later at the age of 50. He left two sons and one daughter. During the 1990s Stanislav Govorukhin became professionally interested in landscape painting. He conducted a number of expositions since 1998. Govorukhin belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church. In 2016 during his 80th birthday Patriarch Kirill of Moscow awarded him with the II class Order of Sergius of Radonezh.
