Film Evening Dedicated to the Centenary of Azerbaijan’s First professional Film Director, Samad Mardanov

Assembly Hall
Organizers: State Film Fund

Azerbaijan’s first professional film director, Samad Mardanov, was born in 1909 in Tiflis (Tbilisi). He was the brother of well-known theatre and film actor Mustafa Mardanov. In 1935, Samad Mardanov graduated from the Directing Faculty of the All Union State Institute of Cinematography (Eisenstein’s class).
S. Mardanov contributed greatly to our national cinema. As a student, he shot the first documentary film ‘Nomads’ (1933) and also directed the feature film ‘On the Shore of a Blue Sea’ (1935) - producer V. Bariet, a cooperation between ‘Azerfilm’ and ‘Mezhrabcomfilm’ (Moscow).
In 1939, Mardanov shot a feature film, ‘Peasants’. This film is in the Golden Fund of Azerbaijani cinema.
Mardanov died on 6 August 1939 in Baku. It is a pity that the director was not able to see his film on a large screen. In this biography there is concealed the short but creative life of the director.
Film director Samad Mardanov was known and loved not only in Azerbaijan, but throughout the Soviet Union. He was a gifted young director, who achieved recognition from cinema specialists while still a student. If this had not been so, this young student would not have been invited to Baku and tasked with the making of such a major documentary as ‘Nomads’. It should be mentioned that in his time, the well-known director, V. Meyerhold invited the young Mardanov to work on the play ‘The Final, the Decisive’.
M. Mikailov related that the young director read a great deal of classical and modern Azerbaijani literature and analysed the work of writers. He was a friend of Mikail Mushvig. He was a good player of Azerbaijani mughams on the tar.
In the director’s notebook, preserved in the archives, there is a notable expression: “The eagle always flies high.” It seems that the great director was writing about himself. He lived a short but bright life.