Screenwriter of the television film “His Excellency’s Adjutant” Igor Bolgarin dies
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He fought for his script to the end, even if his colleagues thought he was wrong
On January 9, at the age of 95, the Soviet, Russian-Ukrainian screenwriter and writer Igor Bolgarin, known to millions of viewers from the black-and-white series “His Excellency’s Adjutant”, the films “On the Count’s Ruins”, “Privalov’s Millions”, “Dersu Uzala”, died. , but not by Akira Kurosawa, but by Agasi Babayan.
Igor Bolgarin was born in Crimea on June 28, 1929 in the family of an agronomist and a teacher. He lost his mother early – she died of illness in 1942. His father went to the front, and Igor Yakovlevich, as a 12-year-old teenager, was sent to Germany, where he worked for a family of German peasants until he managed to escape from there. Returning to his homeland, he ended up in an orphanage in Zaporozhye, served in an airfield service battalion for a year and a half, and after graduating from school in 1949, he moved to Moscow and entered the screenwriting department of VGIK in the workshop of Evgeniy Gabrilovich. After receiving his diploma, Igor Bolgarin worked at Tsentrnauchfilm, writing scripts for documentaries and popular science films, and later feature films.
His calling card for life was the five-part film “His Excellency’s Adjutant” by Yevgeny Tashkov about an intelligence officer during the Civil War with Yuri Solomin in the title role. The country waited for each episode and did not leave the screen. After the success of The Adjutant, Bulgarian wrote seven more books that continued this story. His co-authors were Georgy Seversky and Viktor Smirnov, with whom he collaborated for many years and wrote the trilogy “The Thought of Kovpak”. The Bulgarian often adapted literary works for film, and this requires a special talent. It’s not for nothing that the Oscars give separate awards for adaptations. Among his animation experiences is “An African Tale” based on the work of Kenyan public figure and statesman Jomo Kenyatta.
As a director, Igor Bolgarin, in collaboration with Vadim Ilyenko, made the films “The Southern Cross Above Us” and “The Return of Veronica.” The latest work of the famous screenwriter is the series “The Nine Lives of Nestor Makhno” by Nikolai Kaptin, released in 2006. In addition to cinema, he was engaged in teaching at the Institute of Culture, and his books were constantly republished.
He was a caring person, he was very worried about each of his scripts, although he did not interfere in the director’s work, understanding who was in charge in film production. In the cinematic world, many remember an exceptional, downright historical incident, which descendants will still study, that happened to him in 2005, when the debut film “Halflight” by the young director Artem Antonov was released based on the script of Bolgarin and Smirnov. She received a lot of awards at domestic festivals and at the Montreal International Film Festival. There the film was noted as the best debut with the wording: “For its tact and ability to talk about the cruelty of war, without falling into pathos and denigration.” But the Bulgarian was so upset by the young director’s interpretation (Smirnov’s son, the famous music critic Ilya Smirnov, also agreed with him) that he turned to the Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography, after which they decided to gather critics and filmmakers at the House of Cinema. They didn’t leave until 11 p.m. Some supported the Bulgarian, others desperately argued with him. Igor Yakovlevich spoke so emotionally that one became scared for him – he might lose his heart. “I’m from that cinema when people worked honestly. And this is a thimble game on the part of the producer,” he said.
It’s hard to imagine all this now, but it was so. Each of us is a man of his time, and Igor Bolgarin fiercely defended his position; he could not accept much. At the same time, for those who knew him, he will forever be remembered as a sensitive and honest man who loved his job and worked selflessly in cinema.
Newspaper headline:
The passionate life and quiet departure of a Soviet screenwriter
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