Igor Minaev began working as a director at a film studio in Odessa. In the midst of perestroika, the cinema master moved to France, but continued to shoot feature and documentary films that are interesting to his former fellow citizens. Creativity of the director is multifaceted, and therefore is not always evaluated by critics unanimously.
From the biography of Igor Evgenievich Minaev
The future Ukrainian and French director was born in Kharkov on January 15, 1954. Minaev received a good professional education. In 1977, Igor Evgenievich graduated from the Kiev Institute of Theater Arts, the directorial course of the Department of Cinematography (workshop of V. Nebera).
He began his career after high school at the famous Odessa film studio. His first directorial work did not like the leadership. For several years, the director was not allowed to work on his paintings.
In 1985, Minaev makes a short film “Telephone” based on one of Korney Chukovsky’s poems. The role of Korney Ivanovich in the film was played by Lembit Ulfsak. Minaev's work was appreciated: in 1987, he received the prize of the children's jury of the Moscow Film Festival.
At the end of the 80s, Igor Evgenievich made the art paintings “First Floor” and “Cold March”. In these works, the author reflected the perestroika processes in the country. Both films were screened for screening at the Cannes Film Festival in 1988 and 1990. The director himself recalls a period of chaos and complete creative freedom. The creators could do everything that the soul lay for, funds for creating paintings did not require too much.
In 2013, a film festival was held in Odessa, where the same film "First Floor" was presented in a retrospective screening on the theme of "The Lost World". Viewers saw the best films created by Ukrainian masters at the end of the Soviet era. Some of these paintings were not previously shown, since the distribution of films in the country was destroyed.
Assessing the work of the Ukrainian director, film critic L. Goseyko noted that the directors whose works were presented at the festival belong to the “dispersed revival”: almost none of those artists managed to find application for their talents in their homeland.
Foreign career of Igor Minaev
So it happened with Minaev. In 1988, he moved to France and settled in Paris. Here he taught for some time in one of the film schools, staged performances. One of his works of that period is “The History of the Soldier” to the music of Stravinsky and “Florentine Nights” based on Marina Tsvetaeva’s autobiographical prose.
Minaev was lucky: he managed to take advantage of the support of the French Foundation, which was interested in working with cinemas from Eastern and Central Europe. Many directors, thanks to the support of the foundation, have the opportunity to make their own films. Among these masters were Pavel Lungin, Vitaly Kanevsky and Igor Minaev.
In the early 90s, Minaev conceived and successfully completed the film adaptation of the story of E. Zamyatin "Flood". Isabelle Huppert starred in the film.
A few years later, Igor Evgenievich creates the picture "Moonlit". This is a dramatic story about a brother and sister who met after many years of separation. For this work, Minaev received a prize at the Kinoshok festival.
In 2006, the light was seen by Minaev's film "Far from Sunset Boulevard." The response from the critics was not unambiguous. Some people thought that the story told by the author of the film about a director with a non-standard sexual orientation, who shot musicals in Stalin's time, was presented in the film with unjustified simplifications, without taking into account the genuine drama of that era and the contradictions inherent in that time. The Russian press accepted the film of the former Soviet citizen Minaev with a share of irony and even with ridicule. But at the festival of Russian cinema in French Honfleur, the picture received two prizes at once.
Among other cinematic works by Minaev, one can name: “The Underground Temple of Communism” (1991), “Winter” (2010), “Blue Dress” (2016). For several of his films, Minaev himself wrote the scripts.
Minaev had the opportunity to act as a critic. In 2010, the director was invited to the jury of the International Film Festival, held in Montreal.
