Moscow said goodbye to director and producer Tengiz Semenov

The Lenin Prize laureate, who participated in the creation of the film epic “The Great Patriotic War,” left unnoticed and quietly

In Moscow, they said goodbye to Tengiz Semenov, a documentary film director and producer of animated films. He died on September 8 at the age of 83. It was hard to leave. In recent years I have been very ill. I had to amputate my leg.

Tengiz Semenov was born in Tbilisi at the beginning of the war – on August 5, 1941 – in the family of a documentary cinematographer. He studied at VGIK with the outstanding director Roman Karmen, worked with him on the Soviet-American 20-episode film “The Great Patriotic War” (“The Unknown War” in international distribution). After the master’s death, he completed it independently. Tengiz Semenov directed the 3rd and The 10th film of this epic is “The Siege of Leningrad” (it was shown at the US Library of Congress) and “The Greatest Tank Battle”. He made many other documentaries about a variety of people. One of his best works was “Silouan’s Bench” about a Russian cemetery Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois near Paris, where prominent Russian people are buried.

Everything was going well in the documentary field. Semenov headed the non-fiction film studio “Man and Time”. However, in 1999, together with his wife, animator director Natalya Orlova, he created the Animos animation studio, where many wonderful cartoons were shot. Tengiz Aleksandrovich himself became the producer of the films “The Snow Maiden” and “Zheltukhin” by Maria Muat, “Kashtanka” and “Moby Dick” by Natalya Orlova, “Ochumelov” and “Holiday for Elephants” by Alexey Demin, “The Return of Pinocchio” and “Little Khavroshechka” by Ekaterina Mikhailova . An attentive viewer will understand that in “The Secret of the Third Planet” by Roman Kachanov, Natalya Orlova, who worked as a production designer on this picture, drew one of the characters – Captain Zeleny – from her husband Tengiz Semenov.

In the animation environment, he was a loved one, he attended festivals, helped many people, loved to talk with colleagues, and was a sincere and lively person. Director Maria Muat told MK how Tengiz Aleksandrovich contributed to the invitation of Oleg Tabakov to her film “Zheltukhin”. The fact is that Semenov was related to the famous artist. The daughter of Tengiz Alexandrovich and Natalya Orlova, actress Ekaterina Semenova, was then married to the son of Oleg Pavlovich, Anton Tabakov. So the elder Tabakov did not refuse. Moreover, the whole family took part in the dubbing of the cartoon. In addition to father and son Tabakov, the voices of Ekaterina Semenova and her son Nikita, Tabakov’s grandson, were heard.

The illness prevented Tengiz Semenov from working actively in recent years. He no longer went anywhere, did not meet with his colleagues, but remained in their memory as an irreplaceable person and a professional of the highest standard.