People’s Artist of Russia, director and screenwriter Viktor Merezhko died at the age of 85. This was announced on Sunday, January 30, by the Union of Cinematographers of Russia.
“Yes, it is,” TASS replied to a request for confirmation of information.
Victor Merezhko was born on July 28, 1937 on the Olgenfeld farm in the Rostov region. In 1952 he moved with his family to Ukraine, near Cherkassy, to the village of Russkaya Polyana. After school, he tried to enter the Faculty of Film Engineering of the Kiev Polytechnic Institute, but could not.
In 1956 he entered the Ukrainian Polygraphic Institute. Ivan Fedorov, who graduated in 1961 and was assigned to the Rostov region in the Molot publishing house to work as a process engineer. In 1963 he sent his works to a competition in Moscow, and from 1964 to 1968 he studied at VGIK in the workshop of Alexei Speshnev, and then Ilya Vaisfeld. In the second year, according to his script, they shot a short film “Zarechenskie suitors”.
Scenarios by Viktor Merezhko are the basis of more than 50 films, including Hello and Farewell, Tryn-Grass, Leaving – Leave, Relatives, Citizen Nikanorova Awaits You, A Lonely Woman Wants to Meet You, and others. He also wrote scripts for TV series (“Sonka the Golden Pen”, “Wanted”, etc.), for cartoons. Merezhko is also known as a playwright. His plays “Proletarian Mill of Happiness”, “Night Fun”, “Scream”, “I am a Woman”, “Women’s Table in the Hunting Hall” and others were staged in the USSR and are still being performed in many theaters of the Russian Federation.
In 1989-1995, Viktor Merezhko hosted Kinopanorama on television. Since the 90s, he has also actively starred in crime series.
In 1987, Merezhko became a laureate of the State Prize of the USSR, in 1988 – an Honored Artist of the RSFSR, in 2014 he received the title of People’s Artist of Russia.
He served as secretary of the Union of Cinematographers of the Russian Federation and Moscow, was a member of the Writers’ Union, and chairman of the board of the House of Cinema. Merezhko is a co-founder of the Nika Film Academy and its first president, in recent years he has been an honorary member of the Academy Council.
In early December 2021, Viktor Merezhko shared his memories of Mark Rudinshtein, who died at the age of 75. He recalled how he once asked Rudinstein why he shouldn’t go to Israel, to which the producer replied: “I don’t want to. I love Russia”.
Source: IZ
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