Alla Demidova
Encyclopedia
Alla Sergeyevna Demidova ' onMouseout='HidePop("12934")' href="/topics/Moscow">Moscow
) is a Russia
n actress internationally acclaimed for the tragic parts in innovative plays staged by Yuri Lyubimov
in the Taganka Theatre
. She was awarded the USSR State Prize
in 1977.
, Moscow, and spent her first years at the Osipenko (now Sado′vnicheskaya) street. Father Sergey Alekseevich Demidov, of the legendary Russian industrialist’s line
, was jailed in 1932 in the course of the Stalinist purges, then was acquitted; in 1941 he joined the Red Army
as a volunteer and was killed in 1944 at battle for Warsaw
. Alla's mother, Aleksandra Dmitrievna Demidova (née Kharchenko) worked at the Economy department of the Moscow University (later at Cybernetics
and economic programming section) Mother and daughter spent the War years in Vladimir to the East of Moscow. Demidova remembered her childhood as full of peers' cruelty and general lack of warmth. "I've got too little love from others in those early years to remember them fondly", she later wrote. At the age of five, answering people's questions as to her future ambitions, she was already mentioning 'becoming greatactress' (pronouncing two words as one) as her ultimate goal. It was on the amateur school stage that she started acting and recite poetry, enjoying her first taste of success.
. Under the latter's guidance, Demidova in 1958 played Lida Petrusova in a successful Such Kind of Love (Такая любовь) Pavel Kohout
's adaptation which amounted to her major stage debut. "Subtleness in which she managed to bring out her heroine's repressed sufferings later became Demidova's trademark feature which she was continuously going back to and developing in the course of her career", a biographer wrote years later. Her second attempt to join the Schukin School was successful. She joined the class of Anna Orochko who proved to be a source of whole host of new ideas (one being an attempt to employ her young protégé in the role of Hamlet
). While a Schukun School student Demidova performed in Vakhtangov Theater's production of Death of Gods (Гибель богов, cast as a bikini-clad showgirl), Princess Turandot (a slave girl) and in A Cooking Girl («Стряпуха»). It was then that she's been noticed for the first time by the French
theater man Jean Vilar
who, after having watched her fencing in a gymnasium, informally invited her to join the Théâtre National Populaire
theater. On Schukin stage she's got the leading role in Aleksander Afinogenov's The Distant Things (Далёкое), Mrs. Moon in The Scandalous Affair of Mr. Kettle and Mrs. Moon (after John Priestley's play of the same title) and Madame Frisette in Frisette (Eugène Marin Labiche
adaptation. In 1957 Demidova debuted on screen in director Zakhar Agranenko's The Leningrad Symphony, followed by Nine Years of One Year (dir. Mikhail Romm
, 1961, student), What's a Relativity Theory? (Semyon Raitburg, 1963, student again) and in Komask (1965, chief meteorologist), which she remembered later as being "a kind of reconnaissance".
In 1964 Demidova graduated from Schukin School, having presented Mrs. Young role (in Yuri Lyubimov
's adaptation of Bertholt Brecht's The Good Person of Szechwan
) as her diploma work. "In Good Person she could come out, make a gesture and make this gesture instantly ingrained in people's memory. Her role was not the leading one there but that didn't matter. Her physical presence effect was enormous", colleague Boris Khmelnitsky
later remembered. Dissatisfied with the way she's been treated by the director, though, the young actress tried to return to the Vaktangov's (and failed), spent several months in Mayakovsky Theater, again without any role to cling to, and in the end of 1964 returned to Taganka where she's been employed regularly but mostly in insubstantial roles, quite for some time. The reason for Lyubimov's mistrust might have been the fact that in her first leading role in Taganka, that of Vera in A Hero of Our Time
, Demidova, admittedly, "failed miserably", being just "a young theater school graduate facing a giant of Lermontov
". Several years of hard work in mass scenes and pantomimes followed as a kind of reprimand. The master-and-servant type of relationship that formed between the theater director and the actress in those early never altered even after the latter have become a major film star.
, proved to be the starting point of Demidova's film career. "That one was very close to my heart and artistically intriguing too. I had to play not just any woman, but a poet which involved exploring the process of poetry's getting born, and also finding this thin balance between my heroine’s every day life tribulations and the film’s sublime philosophical essense", she said in Yunost
magazine 1968 interview. Interestingly, this success did very little to dispel Demidova’s intrinsic mistrust with cinema as an art form. "What a pity such a full-bloodied role had been given to me in film, not on in theater", she complained in the same interview.
1968, when six of her films came out, was the year of Demidova's major breakthrough. Some of her earlier roles (like that in Vladimir Basov
's War-time thriller Shield and Sword) Demidova later dismissed as unworthy of any attention, others she regarded as curious for some specific reasons (like that af a comissar in Two Comrades Were Serving
). More significant for her was the SR party
activist Maria Spiridonova
's character in The 6th of July (1968), a very much 'against-the-grain' kind of person, the actress later said to have been in many ways identifying herself with.
Demidova's performance as Liza Protasova in The Living Corpse (1968) was praised by critics, even if Vladimir Vengerov's film itself was not. In 1969 she appeared in Igor Talankin's Tchaikovsky
as Yulia von Mekk.
1968 was also the year Demidova started to get major roles in Taganka, Elmyra in Molliere’s Tartuffe
being first in the line. Much lauded was Demidova's pani Bozhentska in the adaptation of Jerzy Stawiński
's Rush Hour (the role she soon came to detest and refused to do anything with).
'Outstanding' was the word that's been most often used in regard of her Gertrude
next to Vladimir Vysotsky
's Hamlet
(1971). "In a play both phantasmagorical and strikingly real, Demidova artfully portrayed a woman who was misguided rather than vile," critic Raisa Benjash wrote. Critics started to speak of the acresses' unique ability of approaching new, never seen before dimensions in classics, bringing new light and shade to the well known characters of Russian theater's past. All the while Demidova felt she'd been underrated and ignored at Taganka; despite theater critics' later assertions that it was Lyubimov who 'discovered' her, she herself insisted to have been totally out of place in the theater and classified herself as a much more Efros
-type actress. This was later corroborrated by her colleagues. "She definitely wasn't what one may call a director's favourite and her life in Taganka was difficult. She managed to retain her individuality and refine her distinctive style only by using all of her inner strength, intelligence and talent", Veniamin Smekhov
wrote.
The results of the Gertrude triumph were ambivalent. On the one hand, film directors started pestering Demidova with countless scenarios, on the other, (as one critic put it years later) "having realised that in depicting intellectual reflection and spiritual struggle she just had no equal they were all trying to exploit most obvious aspects of her rather unusial image". Nevertheless, much furore was caused by Demidova as Arcadina in Yu. Karasik's Seagull 1970 movie (based on Anton Chekhov
's classic), where the actress, making her character going through unexpected metamorphoses, totally outplayed her colleagues. Demidova excelled as a new-fangled (and rather attractive at that) Lesia Ukrainka in I’m Going to You (Иду к тебе, 1971, directed by Nicolay Maschenko). Her Anna Stenton (in All the King’s Men, 1971) won praises from Oleg Efremov (who was heard saying: "Of all our actresses, Demidova’s eyes are the liveliest"). Demidova played Lizaveta Pavlovna in Andrey Tarkovsky's The Mirror
(1974), then Magic woman in Irina Povolotskaya's Scarlet Flower (Аленький цветочек, 1977), the only fairytale in her film career (which she "single-handedly transformed into a fable", according to critic A.Smolyakov), followed by the impressive Duchess of Marlborough
in Yuly Karasik's Glass of Water (1979), facing Kirill Lavrov
's Henry of Bolingbroke
.
Meanwhile Yuri Lyubimov, invited to direct at Milan
's La Scala
, left Taganka for Anatoly Efros for a while to reign. The latter chose to stage Cherry Orchard
, aiming from the outset to come up with something drastically different from the old-fashioned 'textbook Moscow Art Theater version of the Chekhov's classic. Demidova as a 'modernist' (for some, predictably, - 'decadent') Ranevskaya totally re-vamped the all too familiar character of the classic Russian theater with new aesthetics, tragedy and eccentricity, sentimentalism and irony going hand in hand. Critics were divided in their assessment of Efros' concept and the quality of its overall realisation, but even detractors agreed that what saved the experiment from flopping was Demidova with her powerful performance, supported by Vladimir Vysotsky
as Lopatin. "If there was any harmony, it was not her-with-others, rather her with the Orchard’s truly poetic self", critic Emma Polotskaya remarked. "Initially the heroine for me was totally alien. As time went by, I was beginning to see myself as ‘my Ranevskaya’ more and more", Demidova said years later. One of the Efros interpretation's harshest critic was Lyubimov who described Demidova's performance as 'mannered' and 'grotesque'. Tellingly, several years later he asked Demidova to 'repeat her Ranevskaya algorythm' in the final act of Chekhov's Three Sisters
(1981) where her Masha, ironically aloof, had to burst out into disturbing overemotionalism in the end. Among Demidova's other roles in Taganka of the time were Raskolnikov's mother in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment
(1979) and Marina Mnishek in Pushkin's Boris Godunov
(1982), promptly banned by the Ministry of Culture's special decree (and premiered on June 12, 1988).
In the late 1970s Demidova and Vysotsky, having gravitated into a strong tandem (where, as one critic put it, "ice and fire clashed"), both irritated by Lyubimov's artistic dictatorship, started to experiment with ideas of their own. "We both realized that a massive, colourful theatrical show was becoming old-fashioned and the new era of a private, chamber theater was approaching", Demidova recalled. Having in mind exclusively Vysotsky and Demidova 'solo project', Vitaly Vulf
translated into Russian Tennessee Williams
' Out Cry
, a play for two characters: an acting bother and sister. Lyubimov saw it as nothing more that an 'ego act' (seeing as the original had been written for a couple of Broadway
stars). Fellow Taganka actors apparently took their bosses' side. "As the first Act was ready, we've made the local advertisement, inviting everybody to come and see. Only two people showed up: David Borovsky and his friend. What would you expect: it's... theater!" Demidova later bitterly remarked. The experiment was shelved, along with another project, their own version of Jean Racine
's Phaedra
. Months later Vysotsky died. "It was only after he was gone that I suddenly realized how much he'd meant to me as a partner... He was an exceptional actor, especially in his last years, the one who reigned the audience by literally magnetizing the air around him", she later remembered.
(directed by Igor Maslennikov
, 1982) she not just recited the poem but was acting too, taking upon herself one character after another, "casting a shade of Siver Age over the whole of this three cards' story", as a critic wrote. Highly successful was Demidova’s collaboration with Anatoly Vasilyev in a film The Stone Guest and Other Poems which involved lots of role-juggling too. On stage she recited Anna Akhmatova
(Requiem, Poem Without a Hero), Pushkin, Bunin, assorted Silver Age poets. As a director of her own act, Demidova, a highly individual performer, was now being reviewed as an innovator, developing a genre of her own. There was one major influence, though: that of Giorgio Strehler
, then a Theatre of Nations director, who in May 1987 invited Efros with two of his shows (At the Bottom and Cherry Orchard) to be performed in Milan. "It was Strehler who shaped my whole concept of the way those solo performances could be staged and designed... An easel, a candle, some music, synchronized translator - that was his initial composition which since then I've made my own", Demidova was saying later. "Just music and me, totally alienated from the audience: that was the idea that since then remained unchanged", she said in a 2010 interview. Theater specialists later argued that it was in her solo stage projects that Demidova managed finally to fulfil what's been left of her potential that Lyubimov and Efros, two renown Russian theater directors failed to notice and use.
After Lyubimov's exile to the West, Demidova gradually withdrew from the Taganka Theatre. In 1986 Efros revived Cherry Orchard with Demidova in the leading role. The production won the BITEF
1st Prize, then had a successful run in Paris, albeit in the wake of its director’s death. With Lyubimov coming back, she returned too, to play Marina Mnishek (Boris Godunov, 1988) and Donna Anna (Feast Amidst Plague, 1989), the two roles loaded with deeply tragic overtones.
In 1988 Alla Demidova joined forces with theater director Roman Viktyuk who, driven much by her enthusiasm towards the role, staged Marina Tsvetayeva's Phaedra. "The result was intriguing, it just never fitted into Taganka's repertoire. We were invited to festivals, toured a lot but were being accused by Lyubimov for allegedly exploiting 'his brand'. As an opportunity presented itself, I simply bought the whole production off: costumes, decorations and all, never sure what to do with this purchase," Demidova later remembered. In the Modern History of Soviet and Russian Cinema Phaedra was described as the best Soviet theater production of the 1980s and arguably Viktyuk's most serious work.
' Electra
) which premiered in Athens
, Greece
, in 1992, happened to be Demidova's final role under Lyubimov. The production itself was short-lived, but the actress's performance again was praised (notably, by Literaturnaya Gazeta
s Mikhail Shvydkoy who decades later was to become Russia's Minister of Culture). As the major conflict broke out in the theater and Taganka divided into two camps, Demidova, grudges of the past aside, went to support Lyubimov. "I just coulndn’t understand how could pupils betray their master", she later explained. Once it became obvious the confrontation started to seriously undermine the quality of Taganka's work, Demidova left it for good.
In 1992 Demidova's own A Theater opened - with the production of Phaedra. Then in 1993 came out Quartet, Heiner Mueller's play based on de Laclos
' Dangerous Liaisons
novel. Staged by Demidova in collaboration with Greek director Theodore Tersopulos, it introduced to the Russian audiences the work of a German playwright. Quartet, according to theater critic A. Smolyakov, proved to be one of the best theater premieres in Russia that year. The A Theaters next work (again with the Greek master), Mueller's version of Medea
, premiered on April 29, 1996; Russian critics saw it as an attempt to create the new style of a contemporary tragedy - by "breaking through into origins, an arch-myth, buried in human subconscious". Collaboration with Tersopulos changed Demidova’s perception of theater completely: "After having played Electra, Phaedra and Medea all things that went before tasted insipid," she remarked. Finally, in 2001 Hamlet the Master Class was staged by A Theater and the Greek Attis theater. This production, premiered at a Moscow Theater Olympiad, featured Demidova as Hamlet (her early tutor Anna Orochko’s idea thus having finally been revived), as well as Gertrude and Ophelia.
In the 1990s Demidova still appeared in several fims: as Lebyadkina (The Obsessed, 1992), Miss Minchin (Little Princess, 1997) and Elizaveta Alekseevna (Unseen Traveller, 1998). For two years she's been teaching at the Schukin School (refusing any payment, "so as not to feel tied up to it") but left disappointed with young pupils' attitude. Now firmly under impression that theater both in Russia and the world was in a deep crisis, Demidova quit it completely. "In the past several last years I came to realise: what I do like, my audience doesn't. So I left theater for good", she explained in an interview.
. "That was the role I was really longing for, being really intrigued by this character, but there wasn't any dramatic scenes in this film at all, and the script was bizarre, to put it mildly. Nevertheless, I managed to achive some things: a portrait similarity, reproducing her voice and plastics - people who remembered her assured me as much," she later commented. Interestingly, at one point Yuri Lyubimov was supposed to play Tairov
, but was hospitalised and substituted by Mikhail Kozakov. For Kira Muratova
's The Tuner
(2005), Demidova's won the Nika Award
and the Golden Eagle Award
for Best Actress the same year, having portrayed a kind of 'modern day Ranevskaya', as she put it, a pure and sad post-Chekhov character. After two more films - Igor Maslennikov's Russian Money (2006, based on Ostrovsky
’s play) where she played Murzavetskaya, and S. Kostin's historical documentary Waiting for the Empress (about Maria Fyodorovna
) - Demidova declared she had lost all interest in being filmed. All through the 2000s she was staging her poetry recitals regularly (performing in Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Israel) and continued to do so in the 2010s.
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
) is a Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n actress internationally acclaimed for the tragic parts in innovative plays staged by Yuri Lyubimov
Yuri Lyubimov
Yuri Petrovich Lyubimov is a Soviet and Russian stage actor and director associated with the internationally-renowned Taganka Theatre which he founded ,...
in the Taganka Theatre
Taganka Theatre
Taganka Theatre is a theater located in the Art Nouveau building on Taganka Square in Moscow. The theatre was founded in 1964 by Yuri Lyubimov and continued the traditions of his alma mater, the Vakhtangov Theatre, while also exploring the possibilities of Bertolt Brecht's "epic theatre".Under...
. She was awarded the USSR State Prize
USSR State Prize
The USSR State Prize was the Soviet Union's state honour. It was established on September 9, 1966. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the prize was followed up by the State Prize of the Russian Federation....
in 1977.
Biography
Alla Demidova was born on September 29, 1936 in ZamoskvorechyeZamoskvorechye
Zamoskvorechye District is a district of Central Administrative Okrug in Moscow, Russia. Population: The district contains the eastern half of historical Zamoskvorechye area , and the territories of Zatsepa Street and Paveletsky Rail Terminal south of the Garden Ring...
, Moscow, and spent her first years at the Osipenko (now Sado′vnicheskaya) street. Father Sergey Alekseevich Demidov, of the legendary Russian industrialist’s line
Demidov
The Demidov family, also Demidoff, were an influential Russian merchant, industrialist and later chivalry family, possibly second only to the Tsar himself in wealth during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.-History:...
, was jailed in 1932 in the course of the Stalinist purges, then was acquitted; in 1941 he joined the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
as a volunteer and was killed in 1944 at battle for Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
. Alla's mother, Aleksandra Dmitrievna Demidova (née Kharchenko) worked at the Economy department of the Moscow University (later at Cybernetics
Cybernetics
Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form...
and economic programming section) Mother and daughter spent the War years in Vladimir to the East of Moscow. Demidova remembered her childhood as full of peers' cruelty and general lack of warmth. "I've got too little love from others in those early years to remember them fondly", she later wrote. At the age of five, answering people's questions as to her future ambitions, she was already mentioning 'becoming greatactress' (pronouncing two words as one) as her ultimate goal. It was on the amateur school stage that she started acting and recite poetry, enjoying her first taste of success.
Career
As a schoolgirl, Demidova studied drama in the well-known Moscow actress T. Schekin-Krotova' course. Having graduated, she tried to join the prestigious Shchukin Theatrical School but failed (due to certain flaws in diction) and enrolled in the Moscow University's Economics department which she was graduated from in 1959 and went on reading political economy at the University's Philosophy department for some time. As a third year student she joined the MGU Students' Theater, led first by Igor Lipsky, then Rolan BykovRolan Bykov
Rolan Antonovich Bykov was a Soviet and Russian actor, film director, script writer, poet, song writer. He was awarded People's Artist of the RSFSR in 1973 and the USSR State Prize in 1986.Rolan Bykov was born to a Jewish family in Kiev....
. Under the latter's guidance, Demidova in 1958 played Lida Petrusova in a successful Such Kind of Love (Такая любовь) Pavel Kohout
Pavel Kohout
Pavel Kohout is a Czech and Austrian novelist, playwright, and poet. He was a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, a Prague Spring exponent and dissident in 1970s until he was expelled to Austria...
's adaptation which amounted to her major stage debut. "Subtleness in which she managed to bring out her heroine's repressed sufferings later became Demidova's trademark feature which she was continuously going back to and developing in the course of her career", a biographer wrote years later. Her second attempt to join the Schukin School was successful. She joined the class of Anna Orochko who proved to be a source of whole host of new ideas (one being an attempt to employ her young protégé in the role of Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
). While a Schukun School student Demidova performed in Vakhtangov Theater's production of Death of Gods (Гибель богов, cast as a bikini-clad showgirl), Princess Turandot (a slave girl) and in A Cooking Girl («Стряпуха»). It was then that she's been noticed for the first time by the French
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
theater man Jean Vilar
Jean Vilar
Jean Vilar was a French man of the theatre, who created in 1947 the Avignon theatre festival.After he gave up his literature studies, in 1932 he followed in Paris a course of philosophy of Alain and the theatre courses of Charles Dullin...
who, after having watched her fencing in a gymnasium, informally invited her to join the Théâtre National Populaire
Théâtre National Populaire
The Théâtre National Populaire is a theatre now at Villeurbanne, France. It was founded in 1920 by Firmin Gémier in Paris. The theater's policy is to deliver quality entertainment accessible to the general public....
theater. On Schukin stage she's got the leading role in Aleksander Afinogenov's The Distant Things (Далёкое), Mrs. Moon in The Scandalous Affair of Mr. Kettle and Mrs. Moon (after John Priestley's play of the same title) and Madame Frisette in Frisette (Eugène Marin Labiche
Eugène Marin Labiche
Eugène Marin Labiche was a French dramatist.-Biography:He was born into a bourgeois family and studied law. At the age of twenty, he contributed a short story to Chérubin magazine, entitled Les plus belles sont les plus fausses. A few others followed , but failed to catch the attention of the...
adaptation. In 1957 Demidova debuted on screen in director Zakhar Agranenko's The Leningrad Symphony, followed by Nine Years of One Year (dir. Mikhail Romm
Mikhail Romm
Mikhail Ilych Romm was a Soviet film director.He was born in Irkutsk. His father was a social democrat of Jewish descent who had been exiled there. He graduated from gymnasium in 1917 and entered the Moscow College for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture...
, 1961, student), What's a Relativity Theory? (Semyon Raitburg, 1963, student again) and in Komask (1965, chief meteorologist), which she remembered later as being "a kind of reconnaissance".
In 1964 Demidova graduated from Schukin School, having presented Mrs. Young role (in Yuri Lyubimov
Yuri Lyubimov
Yuri Petrovich Lyubimov is a Soviet and Russian stage actor and director associated with the internationally-renowned Taganka Theatre which he founded ,...
's adaptation of Bertholt Brecht's The Good Person of Szechwan
The Good Person of Szechwan
The Good Person of Szechwan is a play written by the German theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht, in collaboration with Margarete Steffin and Ruth Berlau. The play was begun in 1938 but not completed until 1943, while the author was in exile in the United States...
) as her diploma work. "In Good Person she could come out, make a gesture and make this gesture instantly ingrained in people's memory. Her role was not the leading one there but that didn't matter. Her physical presence effect was enormous", colleague Boris Khmelnitsky
Boris Khmelnitsky
Boris Alexandrovich Khmelnitsky was a Russian theatre and movie actor.He worked many years in the Taganka Theatre in Moscow. In cinema, he was known for many of his roles in Soviet adventure films. He played Robin Hood, Prince Igor, Captain Grant and many other characters...
later remembered. Dissatisfied with the way she's been treated by the director, though, the young actress tried to return to the Vaktangov's (and failed), spent several months in Mayakovsky Theater, again without any role to cling to, and in the end of 1964 returned to Taganka where she's been employed regularly but mostly in insubstantial roles, quite for some time. The reason for Lyubimov's mistrust might have been the fact that in her first leading role in Taganka, that of Vera in A Hero of Our Time
A Hero of Our Time
A Hero of Our Time is a novel by Mikhail Lermontov, written in 1839 and revised in 1841. It is an example of the superfluous man novel, noted for its compelling Byronic hero Pechorin and for the beautiful descriptions of the Caucasus...
, Demidova, admittedly, "failed miserably", being just "a young theater school graduate facing a giant of Lermontov
Mikhail Lermontov
Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov , a Russian Romantic writer, poet and painter, sometimes called "the poet of the Caucasus", became the most important Russian poet after Alexander Pushkin's death in 1837. Lermontov is considered the supreme poet of Russian literature alongside Pushkin and the greatest...
". Several years of hard work in mass scenes and pantomimes followed as a kind of reprimand. The master-and-servant type of relationship that formed between the theater director and the actress in those early never altered even after the latter have become a major film star.
1966 - 1979
The leading role in Igor Talankin's (heavily censored) Daylight Stars (Дневные звезды, 1966), that of Olga BerggoltsOlga Berggolts
Olga Fyodorovna Bergholz was a Soviet poet. She is most famous for her work on the Leningrad radio during the city's blockade, when she became the symbol of city's strength and determination.-Early life:...
, proved to be the starting point of Demidova's film career. "That one was very close to my heart and artistically intriguing too. I had to play not just any woman, but a poet which involved exploring the process of poetry's getting born, and also finding this thin balance between my heroine’s every day life tribulations and the film’s sublime philosophical essense", she said in Yunost
Yunost
Yunost is a Russian language literary magazine created in 1955 in Moscow by Valentin Kataev, its first editor-in-chief, who was fired in 1961 for publishing Vasily Aksyonov's Ticket to the Stars...
magazine 1968 interview. Interestingly, this success did very little to dispel Demidova’s intrinsic mistrust with cinema as an art form. "What a pity such a full-bloodied role had been given to me in film, not on in theater", she complained in the same interview.
1968, when six of her films came out, was the year of Demidova's major breakthrough. Some of her earlier roles (like that in Vladimir Basov
Vladimir Basov
Vladimir Pavlovich Basov was a Soviet actor, film director, and screenwriter. Vladimir Basov was named People's Artist of the USSR in 1983.-Biography:...
's War-time thriller Shield and Sword) Demidova later dismissed as unworthy of any attention, others she regarded as curious for some specific reasons (like that af a comissar in Two Comrades Were Serving
Two Comrades Were Serving
Two Comrades Were Serving is a 1968 Soviet film directed by Yevgeni Karelov, script by Yuli Dunsky and Valeri Frid. The film is about the Russian civil war, in particular, the battle for the Crimean peninsula.- Plot :...
). More significant for her was the SR party
Socialist-Revolutionary Party
thumb|right|200px|Socialist-Revolutionary election poster, 1917. The caption in red reads "партия соц-рев" , short for Party of the Socialist Revolutionaries...
activist Maria Spiridonova
Maria Spiridonova
Maria Alexandrovna Spiridonova was a figure in Russian revolutionary circles at the beginning of the 20th century.- Biography :She joined the Socialist-Revolutionary Party during her training to become a nurse....
's character in The 6th of July (1968), a very much 'against-the-grain' kind of person, the actress later said to have been in many ways identifying herself with.
Demidova's performance as Liza Protasova in The Living Corpse (1968) was praised by critics, even if Vladimir Vengerov's film itself was not. In 1969 she appeared in Igor Talankin's Tchaikovsky
Tchaikovsky (film)
Tchaikovsky is a 1969 Soviet film directed by Igor Talankin. It featured Innokenty Smoktunovsky in the role of the famous Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky...
as Yulia von Mekk.
1968 was also the year Demidova started to get major roles in Taganka, Elmyra in Molliere’s Tartuffe
Tartuffe
Tartuffe is a comedy by Molière. It is one of his most famous plays.-History:Molière wrote Tartuffe in 1664...
being first in the line. Much lauded was Demidova's pani Bozhentska in the adaptation of Jerzy Stawiński
Jerzy Stefan Stawiński
Jerzy Stefan Stawiński was a Polish screenwriter and film director. Beginning in 1957 he had written or co-written 29 films. He wrote a segment of the film Love at Twenty, which was entered into the 12th Berlin International Film Festival.He grew up in the Żoliborz district of Warsaw. When World...
's Rush Hour (the role she soon came to detest and refused to do anything with).
'Outstanding' was the word that's been most often used in regard of her Gertrude
Gertrude (Hamlet)
In William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, Gertrude is Hamlet's mother and Queen of Denmark. Her relationship with Hamlet is somewhat turbulent, since he resents her for marrying her husband's brother Claudius after he murdered the King...
next to Vladimir Vysotsky
Vladimir Vysotsky
Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotsky was a Soviet singer, songwriter, poet, and actor whose career had an immense and enduring effect on Russian culture. He became widely known for his unique singing style and for his lyrics, which featured social and political commentary in often humorous street...
's Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
(1971). "In a play both phantasmagorical and strikingly real, Demidova artfully portrayed a woman who was misguided rather than vile," critic Raisa Benjash wrote. Critics started to speak of the acresses' unique ability of approaching new, never seen before dimensions in classics, bringing new light and shade to the well known characters of Russian theater's past. All the while Demidova felt she'd been underrated and ignored at Taganka; despite theater critics' later assertions that it was Lyubimov who 'discovered' her, she herself insisted to have been totally out of place in the theater and classified herself as a much more Efros
Anatoly Efros
-Children's Theatre and the Lenkom:Efros was born in Kharkov. In 1954, he was appointed to run the Central Theatre for Children in Moscow and managed to transform it from a conservative backwater into one of the most fashionable Soviet theatres....
-type actress. This was later corroborrated by her colleagues. "She definitely wasn't what one may call a director's favourite and her life in Taganka was difficult. She managed to retain her individuality and refine her distinctive style only by using all of her inner strength, intelligence and talent", Veniamin Smekhov
Veniamin Smekhov
Veniamin Borisovich Smekhov is a Soviet and Russian actor and stage director.Smekhov has long worked in the Moscow Taganka Theatre where his roles included Woland in a stage adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. In film, he is most known and loved for the role of Athos in a...
wrote.
The results of the Gertrude triumph were ambivalent. On the one hand, film directors started pestering Demidova with countless scenarios, on the other, (as one critic put it years later) "having realised that in depicting intellectual reflection and spiritual struggle she just had no equal they were all trying to exploit most obvious aspects of her rather unusial image". Nevertheless, much furore was caused by Demidova as Arcadina in Yu. Karasik's Seagull 1970 movie (based on Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...
's classic), where the actress, making her character going through unexpected metamorphoses, totally outplayed her colleagues. Demidova excelled as a new-fangled (and rather attractive at that) Lesia Ukrainka in I’m Going to You (Иду к тебе, 1971, directed by Nicolay Maschenko). Her Anna Stenton (in All the King’s Men, 1971) won praises from Oleg Efremov (who was heard saying: "Of all our actresses, Demidova’s eyes are the liveliest"). Demidova played Lizaveta Pavlovna in Andrey Tarkovsky's The Mirror
The Mirror (1975 film)
The Mirror is a 1975 Russian film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. It is loosely autobiographical, blending childhood memories, newsreel footage and poems by his father Arseny Tarkovsky...
(1974), then Magic woman in Irina Povolotskaya's Scarlet Flower (Аленький цветочек, 1977), the only fairytale in her film career (which she "single-handedly transformed into a fable", according to critic A.Smolyakov), followed by the impressive Duchess of Marlborough
Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough
Sarah Churchill , Duchess of Marlborough rose to be one of the most influential women in British history as a result of her close friendship with Queen Anne of Great Britain.Sarah's friendship and influence with Princess Anne was widely known, and leading public figures...
in Yuly Karasik's Glass of Water (1979), facing Kirill Lavrov
Kirill Lavrov
Kirill Yuryevich Lavrov was a well-known Soviet and Russian film and theatre actor and director.-Childhood:Kirill Yuryevich Lavrov was born on September 15, 1925, in Leningrad, USSR . He was baptized by the Russian Orthodox Church of St. John the Divine in Lavrushinskoe Podvorie Monastery in...
's Henry of Bolingbroke
Henry IV of England
Henry IV was King of England and Lord of Ireland . He was the ninth King of England of the House of Plantagenet and also asserted his grandfather's claim to the title King of France. He was born at Bolingbroke Castle in Lincolnshire, hence his other name, Henry Bolingbroke...
.
Meanwhile Yuri Lyubimov, invited to direct at Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
's La Scala
La Scala
La Scala , is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the New Royal-Ducal Theatre at La Scala...
, left Taganka for Anatoly Efros for a while to reign. The latter chose to stage Cherry Orchard
The Cherry Orchard
The Cherry Orchard is Russian playwright Anton Chekhov's last play. It premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre 17 January 1904 in a production directed by Constantin Stanislavski. Chekhov intended this play as a comedy and it does contain some elements of farce; however, Stanislavski insisted on...
, aiming from the outset to come up with something drastically different from the old-fashioned 'textbook Moscow Art Theater version of the Chekhov's classic. Demidova as a 'modernist' (for some, predictably, - 'decadent') Ranevskaya totally re-vamped the all too familiar character of the classic Russian theater with new aesthetics, tragedy and eccentricity, sentimentalism and irony going hand in hand. Critics were divided in their assessment of Efros' concept and the quality of its overall realisation, but even detractors agreed that what saved the experiment from flopping was Demidova with her powerful performance, supported by Vladimir Vysotsky
Vladimir Vysotsky
Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotsky was a Soviet singer, songwriter, poet, and actor whose career had an immense and enduring effect on Russian culture. He became widely known for his unique singing style and for his lyrics, which featured social and political commentary in often humorous street...
as Lopatin. "If there was any harmony, it was not her-with-others, rather her with the Orchard’s truly poetic self", critic Emma Polotskaya remarked. "Initially the
Three Sisters (play)
Three Sisters is a play by Russian author and playwright Anton Chekhov, perhaps partially inspired by the situation of the three Brontë sisters, but most probably by the three Zimmermann sisters in Perm...
(1981) where her Masha, ironically aloof, had to burst out into disturbing overemotionalism in the end. Among Demidova's other roles in Taganka of the time were Raskolnikov's mother in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment
Crime and Punishment
Crime and Punishment is a novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It was first published in the literary journal The Russian Messenger in twelve monthly installments during 1866. It was later published in a single volume. This is the second of Dostoyevsky's full-length novels following his...
(1979) and Marina Mnishek in Pushkin's Boris Godunov
Boris Godunov
Boris Fyodorovich Godunov was de facto regent of Russia from c. 1585 to 1598 and then the first non-Rurikid tsar from 1598 to 1605. The end of his reign saw Russia descend into the Time of Troubles.-Early years:...
(1982), promptly banned by the Ministry of Culture's special decree (and premiered on June 12, 1988).
Demidova and Vysotsky
In the late 1970s Demidova and Vysotsky, having gravitated into a strong tandem (where, as one critic put it, "ice and fire clashed"), both irritated by Lyubimov's artistic dictatorship, started to experiment with ideas of their own. "We both realized that a massive, colourful theatrical show was becoming old-fashioned and the new era of a private, chamber theater was approaching", Demidova recalled. Having in mind exclusively Vysotsky and Demidova 'solo project', Vitaly Vulf
Vitaly Vulf
Vitaly Yakovlevich Vulf was a Russian art, drama, film critic, literary critic, translator, TV and radio broadcaster and critic.- Biography :...
translated into Russian Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...
' Out Cry
Out Cry
Out Cry is a play by Tennessee Williams which was one version of The Two-Character Play by Williams. Out Cry premiered at the Ivanhoe Theatre in Chicago on July 8, 1971. It debuted on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre with a preview on February 28, 1973 and then ran from March 1-10...
, a play for two characters: an acting bother and sister. Lyubimov saw it as nothing more that an 'ego act' (seeing as the original had been written for a couple of Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
stars). Fellow Taganka actors apparently took their bosses' side. "As the first Act was ready, we've made the local advertisement, inviting everybody to come and see. Only two people showed up:
Jean Racine
Jean Racine , baptismal name Jean-Baptiste Racine , was a French dramatist, one of the "Big Three" of 17th-century France , and one of the most important literary figures in the Western tradition...
's Phaedra
Phaedra (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Phaedra is the daughter of Minos and Pasiphaë, wife of Theseus and the mother of Demophon of Athens and Acamas. Phaedra's name derives from the Greek word φαιδρός , which meant "bright"....
. Months later Vysotsky died. "It was only after he was gone that I suddenly realized how much he'd meant to me as a partner... He was an exceptional actor, especially in his last years, the one who reigned the audience by literally magnetizing the air around him", she later remembered.
1980s
In the early 1980s Demidova started to produce her own recital shows, each staged as a miniature theater play. Some, being shown on the Soviet TV, became highly popular. In Pushkin's Queen of SpadesQueen of Spades
The Queen of spades is one of 52 playing cards.Queen of spades may also refer to:* alternative name of the card game Old Maid, in which that particular playing card plays an important role...
(directed by Igor Maslennikov
Igor Maslennikov
Igor Fyodorovich Maslennikov is a Russian film director.He was born in Gorky. In 1954 Maslennikov completed his education in the department of journalism of the Leningrad University and worked as an editor, script writer, and cameraman on Leningrad television...
, 1982) she not just recited the poem but was acting too, taking upon herself one character after another, "casting a shade of Siver Age over the whole of this three cards' story", as a critic wrote. Highly successful was Demidova’s collaboration with Anatoly Vasilyev in a film The Stone Guest and Other Poems which involved lots of role-juggling too. On stage she recited Anna Akhmatova
Anna Akhmatova
Anna Andreyevna Gorenko , better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova , was a Russian and Soviet modernist poet, one of the most acclaimed writers in the Russian canon.Harrington p11...
(Requiem, Poem Without a Hero), Pushkin, Bunin, assorted Silver Age poets. As a director of her own act, Demidova, a highly individual performer, was now being reviewed as an innovator, developing a genre of her own. There was one major influence, though: that of Giorgio Strehler
Giorgio Strehler
Giorgio Strehler was an Italian opera and theatre director.-Biography:Strehler was born in Barcola, Trieste to an Austrian father and a Franco-Slovene mother; he grew up speaking Italian but spoke French well and his German was passable. He became suddenly fatherless at the age of three, his...
, then a Theatre of Nations director, who in May 1987 invited Efros with two of his shows (At the Bottom and Cherry Orchard) to be performed in Milan. "It was Strehler who shaped my whole concept of the way those solo performances could be staged and designed... An easel, a candle, some music, synchronized translator - that was his initial composition which since then I've made my own", Demidova was saying later. "Just music and me, totally alienated from the audience: that was the idea that since then remained unchanged", she said in a 2010 interview. Theater specialists later argued that it was in her solo stage projects that Demidova managed finally to fulfil what's been left of her potential that Lyubimov and Efros, two renown Russian theater directors failed to notice and use.
After Lyubimov's exile to the West, Demidova gradually withdrew from the Taganka Theatre. In 1986 Efros revived Cherry Orchard with Demidova in the leading role. The production won the BITEF
Bitef
BITEF, Belgrade International Theatre Festival, is one of the theatre festival that takes place in Belgrade, Serbia, each year.Founded in 1967, BITEF has continually followed and supported the latest theater trends...
1st Prize, then had a successful run in Paris, albeit in the wake of its director’s death. With Lyubimov coming back, she returned too, to play Marina Mnishek (Boris Godunov, 1988) and Donna Anna (Feast Amidst Plague, 1989), the two roles loaded with deeply tragic overtones.
In 1988 Alla Demidova joined forces with theater director Roman Viktyuk who, driven much by her enthusiasm towards the role, staged Marina Tsvetayeva's Phaedra. "The result was intriguing, it just never fitted into Taganka's repertoire. We were invited to festivals, toured a lot but were being accused by Lyubimov for allegedly exploiting 'his brand'. As an opportunity presented itself, I simply bought the whole production off: costumes, decorations and all, never sure what to do with this purchase," Demidova later remembered. In the Modern History of Soviet and Russian Cinema Phaedra was described as the best Soviet theater production of the 1980s and arguably Viktyuk's most serious work.
1990s
Electra (in SophoclesSophocles
Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...
' Electra
Electra (Sophocles)
Electra or Elektra is a Greek tragedy by Sophocles. Its date is not known, but various stylistic similarities with the Philoctetes and the Oedipus at Colonus lead scholars to suppose that it was written towards the end of Sophocles' career.Set in the city of Argos a few years after the Trojan...
) which premiered in Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
, Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
, in 1992, happened to be Demidova's final role under Lyubimov. The production itself was short-lived, but the actress's performance again was praised (notably, by Literaturnaya Gazeta
Literaturnaya Gazeta
Literaturnaya Gazeta is a weekly cultural and political newspaper published in Russia and Soviet Union.- Overview :...
s Mikhail Shvydkoy who decades later was to become Russia's Minister of Culture). As the major conflict broke out in the theater and Taganka divided into two camps, Demidova, grudges of the past aside, went to support Lyubimov. "I just coulndn’t understand how could pupils betray their master", she later explained. Once it became obvious the confrontation started to seriously undermine the quality of Taganka's work, Demidova left it for good.
In 1992 Demidova's own A Theater opened - with the production of Phaedra. Then in 1993 came out Quartet, Heiner Mueller's play based on de Laclos
Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos was a French novelist, official and army general, best known for writing the epistolary novel Les Liaisons dangereuses ....
' Dangerous Liaisons
Dangerous Liaisons
Dangerous Liaisons is a 1988 drama film based upon Christopher Hampton's play, Les liaisons dangereuses, which in turn was a theatrical adaptation of the 18th-century French novel Les Liaisons dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos....
novel. Staged by Demidova in collaboration with Greek director Theodore Tersopulos, it introduced to the Russian audiences the work of a German playwright. Quartet, according to theater critic A. Smolyakov, proved to be one of the best theater premieres in Russia that year. The A Theaters next work (again with the Greek master), Mueller's version of Medea
Medea (play)
Medea is an ancient Greek tragedy written by Euripides, based upon the myth of Jason and Medea and first produced in 431 BC. The plot centers on the barbarian protagonist as she finds her position in the Greek world threatened, and the revenge she takes against her husband Jason who has betrayed...
, premiered on April 29, 1996; Russian critics saw it as an attempt to create the new style of a contemporary tragedy - by "breaking through into origins, an arch-myth, buried in human subconscious". Collaboration with Tersopulos changed Demidova’s perception of theater completely: "After having played Electra, Phaedra and Medea all things that went before tasted insipid," she remarked. Finally, in 2001 Hamlet the Master Class was staged by A Theater and the Greek Attis theater. This production, premiered at a Moscow Theater Olympiad, featured Demidova as Hamlet (her early tutor Anna Orochko’s idea thus having finally been revived), as well as Gertrude and Ophelia.
In the 1990s Demidova still appeared in several fims: as Lebyadkina (The Obsessed, 1992), Miss Minchin (Little Princess, 1997) and Elizaveta Alekseevna (Unseen Traveller, 1998). For two years she's been teaching at the Schukin School (refusing any payment, "so as not to feel tied up to it") but left disappointed with young pupils' attitude. Now firmly under impression that theater both in Russia and the world was in a deep crisis, Demidova quit it completely. "In the past several last years I came to realise: what I do like, my audience doesn't. So I left theater for good", she explained in an interview.
2000 - present
In 2000-2002 Demidova appeared on screen twice, as Lora Lyons (in Remembering Sherlock Holmes Russian TV series) and mad Elsa (in Letters to Elsa, a film based on Arcady Vysotsky's screenplay). In Boris Blank's Tairov’s Death (2004) Demidova played Alisa KoonenAlisa Koonen
Alisa Georgyevna Koonen , also known as Alice Coonen , was a Russian and Soviet actress and the wife of the director Alexander Tairov....
. "That was the role I was really longing for, being really intrigued by this character, but there wasn't any dramatic scenes in this film at all, and the script was bizarre, to put it mildly. Nevertheless, I managed to achive some things: a portrait similarity, reproducing her voice and plastics - people who remembered her assured me as much," she later commented. Interestingly, at one point Yuri Lyubimov was supposed to play Tairov
Tairov
Tairov is a village in the Armavir Province of Armenia.- References :* – World-Gazetteer.com...
, but was hospitalised and substituted by Mikhail Kozakov. For Kira Muratova
Kira Muratova
Kira Muratova is a Soviet and Ukrainian film director, screenwriter and actress. She was born in 1934 in Soroca, Bessarabia, Romania . She was born to a Romanian mother and a Russian father. Muratova is known for her unusual and original directorial style...
's The Tuner
The Tuner
The Tuner is a 2004 Ukraine/Russia mix film of art house grotesque and a sting comedy. At the heart of Kira Muratova’s film is her characteristic and enduring love of predation—predation for its own sake...
(2005), Demidova's won the Nika Award
Nika Award
The Nika Award is a prestigious annual ceremony held by the Russian Academy of Cinema Arts and Sciences which was established in 1987 in Moscow, Russia by Yuli Gusman, and ostensibly modelled on the Academy Awards . Russian Academy Award takes its name from Nike, the goddess of victory...
and the Golden Eagle Award
Golden Eagle Award
The Golden Eagle Award is an accolade by the Russian National Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences of Russia to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, directors, actors, and writers...
for Best Actress the same year, having portrayed a kind of 'modern day Ranevskaya', as she put it, a pure and sad post-Chekhov character. After two more films - Igor Maslennikov's Russian Money (2006, based on Ostrovsky
Ostrovsky
Ostrovsky or Ostrovskoy , Ostrovskaya , or Ostrovskoye may refer to:People*Alexander Ostrovsky , Russian dramatist*Arkady Ostrovsky , Soviet composer...
’s play) where she played Murzavetskaya, and S. Kostin's historical documentary Waiting for the Empress (about Maria Fyodorovna
Maria Fyodorovna
Maria Feodorovna , born Princess Dagmar of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg and later Princess Dagmar of Denmark, was Empress consort of Russia as spouse of Emperor Alexander III. She was the second daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark and Louise of Hesse-Cassel...
) - Demidova declared she had lost all interest in being filmed. All through the 2000s she was staging her poetry recitals regularly (performing in Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Israel) and continued to do so in the 2010s.
Honours and awards
- USSR State PrizeUSSR State PrizeThe USSR State Prize was the Soviet Union's state honour. It was established on September 9, 1966. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the prize was followed up by the State Prize of the Russian Federation....
(1977) - "For participation in the film Escape of Mr. McKinley" - Prize of the President of the Russian Federation in the field of art and literature in 2000 (25 April 2001)
- People's Artist of the RSFSR (1984)
- Stanislavsky award (1993)
- Order of FriendshipOrder of FriendshipThe Order of Friendship is a state decoration of Russia established by decree # 442 of March 2, 1994 of the President of the Russian Federation....
(1997) - "For services to the state and significant contribution to strengthening friendship and cooperation between peoples, many years of fruitful activity in the arts and culture" - Order of Merit for the FatherlandOrder of Merit for the FatherlandThe Order of Merit for the Fatherland was instituted on 2 March 1994 by Presidential Decree. The statutes describe it as a decoration for merit, not an order of knights....
- 4th class (2007) - "For her contribution to the development of national culture and art, and many years of creative activity"
- 3rd class (2011) - "For her contribution to the development of domestic theatrical and cinematic arts, many years of creative activity" [54]
- The award "Idol" (2009) - "For high service to art."
- Nika AwardNika AwardThe Nika Award is a prestigious annual ceremony held by the Russian Academy of Cinema Arts and Sciences which was established in 1987 in Moscow, Russia by Yuli Gusman, and ostensibly modelled on the Academy Awards . Russian Academy Award takes its name from Nike, the goddess of victory...
External links
- Official site of Alla Demidova
- Alla Demidova at Kino-Teatr.ru