Dzigan, Efim

Born Dec. 2 (14), 1898, in Moscow. Soviet film director. People’s Artist of the USSR (1969). Member of the CPSU from 1943.

Dzigan began working in motion pictures in 1924. In 1926 he graduated from B. V. Chaikovskii Motion Picture School. He made his directorial debut with the film First Cornet Streshnev (1928, with M. E. Chiaureli). A participant in the Civil War, Dzigan in this film introduced the theme that was to dominate his future work: the development of the consciousness of the masses under the influence of the crucial events of history. His greatest work is the historical revolutionary epic We Are From Kronstadt (1936, screenplay by Vs. Vishnevskii), a work innovative in form and content. The plot and ideological content of the film are centered around the organizing influence of the party on sailors disposed to the revolution. Dzigan also made the films Fatali-Khan (released in 1959) and Dzhambul (1953). Subsequently his best films likewise affirmed the genre of the historical revolutionary epic. In 1956, Dzigan made one of the first Soviet wide-screen films, Prologue, devoted to the Revolution of 1905. The heroic and epic foundation of Dzigan’s work was evident in the film The Iron Flood (1967, after the novel by A. S. Serafimovich). In 1937 he began teaching at the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography, where he became a professor in 1965. A recipient of the State Prize of the USSR (1941), he has been awarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and a medal.