Early life and career

Kira Korotkova was born in 1934 in Soroca, Romania (present-day Moldova) to a Russian father^[13] and a Romanian mother (of Bessarabian Jewish origin).^[14][15][16] Her parents were both active communists and members of the Communist Party. Her father, Romanian: Gheorghe Corotcov, Russian: Юрий Коротков (1907–1941), participated in the anti-fascist guerilla movement in World War II, was arrested by Romanian forces and shot after interrogation. After the war, Kira lived in Bucharest with her mother, Romanian: Natalia Corotcov-Scurtu, was born Reznic, (1906–1981), a gynaecologist, who then pursued a government career in Socialist Romania.

In 1959, Kira graduated from the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography in Moscow, specializing in directing.^[17] Upon graduation Korotkova received a director position with the Odesa Film Studio in Odesa, a port city at the Black Sea near to her native Bessarabia. She directed her first professional film in 1961 and worked with the studio until a professional conflict made her to move to Leningrad in 1978. There she made one film with Lenfilm Studio, but returned to Odesa afterwards. Muratova's films came under constant criticism of the Soviet officials due to her idiosyncratic film language that did not comply with the norms of socialist realism. Film scholar Isa Willinger has compared Muratova's cinematographic form to the Soviet Avant-garde, especially to Eisenstein's montage of attractions.^[18] Several times Muratova was banned from working as a director for a number of years each time.

Kira married her fellow Odesa studio director Oleksandr Muratov in the early 1960s and co-created several films with him. The couple had a daughter, Marianna, but soon divorced and Muratov moved to Kyiv where he started work with Dovzhenko Film Studios. Kira Muratova kept her ex-husband's surname despite her later marriage to Leningrad painter and production designer Evgeny Golubenko.

Post-Soviet period

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In the 1990s, an extremely productive period began for Muratova, during which she shot a feature film every two or three years, often working with the same actors and crew.^[11] Her work The Asthenic Syndrome (1989) was described as 'an absurdist masterpiece' and was the only film to be banned (due to male and female nudity) during the Soviet Union perestroika.^[19] Her other films released in this period include for example, The Sentimental Policeman (1992), Passions (1994),Three Stories (1997) and a short (1999) Letter to America.^[20]

Two actresses Muratova has repeatedly cast are Renata Litvinova and Natalya Buzko. Muratova's films were usually productions of Ukraine or co-productions between Ukraine and Russia, always in the Russian language, although Muratova could speak Ukrainian and did not object to the Ukrainianization of Ukrainian cinema.^[21] Muratova supported the Euromaidan protesters and the following 2014 Ukrainian revolution.^[21]

Muratova's films were premiered at International Film Festivals in Berlin (1990, 1997),^[22][23] Cannes,^[24] Moscow,^[25] Rome, Venice and others.

Next to Aleksandr Sokurov, Muratova was considered the most idiosyncratic contemporary Russian-language film director.^[12] Her works can be seen as postmodern, employing eclecticism, parody, discontinuous editing, disrupted narration and intense visual and sound stimuli,^[18] and her 'bitter humour reflecting a violent, loveless, morally empty society.^[17] In her film, Three Stories, she explores the 'evil is hidden in a beautiful... innocent shell, and corpses form part of the décor.'^[11] She was an admirer of Sergei Parajanov and her focus on 'ornamentalism' has been likened to his and was also anti-realist, with 'repetition giving shape to all possibility', with her last film, Eternal Homecoming effectively about cinema itself being unfinished, it is almost as if the 'spool of cinema keeps threading and tangling, threading and tangling'.^[12]

Recognition and awards

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It was only during Perestroyka that Muratova received wide public recognition and first awards. In 1988, the International Women's Film Festival Créteil (France) showed a first retrospective of her works. Her film Among Grey Stones was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival.^[24]

In 1990, her film Asthenic Syndrome won the Silver Bear Jury Grand Prix at the Berlinale.^[22][17] In 1994, she was awarded the Leopard of Honour for her life oeuvre at The Locarno International Film Festival (Switzerland) and in 2000, she was given the Andrzej Wajda Freedom Award.^[18] In 1997, her film Three Stories was entered into the 47th Berlin International Film Festival.^[23]

Her 2002 film Chekhov's Motifs was entered into the 24th Moscow International Film Festival.^[25] Her film The Tuner was shown at the Venice Film Festival in 2004. Her films received the Russian "Nika" prize in 1991, 1995, 2005, 2007, 2009 and 2013. In 2005, a retrospective was shown at the Lincoln Center in New York City.^[17] In 2013, a full retrospective of her films was shown at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.^[26][17]

• Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise
• Order of Friendship
• People's Artist of Ukraine
• 1993 Shevchenko National Prize

Her work has been mistakenly been 'largely ignored' in the Film Studies courses or in discussions on 'the greatest filmmakers of all time' according to recent film critic, Bianca Garner.