Vsevolod Pudovkin occupation director
Biography
Vsevolod Pudovkin was born in Penza into a Russian family, the third of six children. His father Illarion Epifanovich Pudovkin came from peasants of the Penza Governorate, the village of Shuksha and worked in several companies as a manager and a door-to-door salesman. Vsevolod's mother Elizaveta Alexandrovna Pudovkina (née Shilkina) was a housewife.A student of engineering at Moscow University, Pudovkin saw active duty during World War I, being captured by the Germans. During this time he studied foreign languages and did book illustrations. After the war, he abandoned his professional activity and joined the world of cinema, first as a screenwriter, actor and art director, and then as an assistant director to Lev Kuleshov.
In 1924, he married Anna Zemtsova. Pudovkin asserted that his wife encouraged him for pursuing a career as a filmmaker.His first notable work was a comedy short Chess Fever (1925) co-directed with Nikolai Shpikovsky. José Raúl Capablanca played a small part in it, with a number of other cameos presented. In 1926 he directed what would become one of the masterpieces of silent movies: Mother, where he developed several montage theories that would make him famous. Both movies featured Pudovkin's wife Anna Nikolaevna Zemtsova in supporting female parts (she left cinema shortly after).
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