Dimitri Kirsanoff

Dimitri Kirsanoff (, né Markus David Sussmanovitch Kaplan, Маркус Давид Зусманович Каплан;

Early life Kirsanoff was born Markus David Sussmanovitch Kaplan on 5 March 1899 in Tartu (then Juryev), Estonia, then Russian Empire. Many of the facts about his early life have been difficult to verify, and different sources have lent support to alternative accounts. It seems that his parents were Lithuanian Jews who had come to Tartu in 1870. After the murder of his father by Bolsheviks in 1919,

Career During the period 1921-1929 (the last years of silent cinema) Kirsanoff completed five fiction films (three features and two short or medium-length), all of them featuring the actress Nadia Sibirskaïa.

Kirsanoff's approach to film-making was preoccupied most of all by the image - how it is composed and how it relates to other images, and not just for its capacity to illustrate a story.

Kirsanoff's first sound film was Rapt (1934), based on La Séparation des races by Charles Ferdinand Ramuz, and produced in Switzerland. Use of dialogue is kept to a minimum, but greater prominence is taken on by the musical score, written by Arthur Honegger and Arthur Hoérée. The finished film received very limited distribution however, and although it went on to gather admiration from film historians, it could not compete in a market increasingly dominated by large American companies. It was the last feature film which Kirsanoff had the freedom to work as he wanted.

Kirsanoff died suddenly from a heart attack in Paris on 11 February 1957, at the age of 57.

Filmography 1923: L'Ironie du destin; feature film, believed lost 1926: Ménilmontant; medium length film 1927: Sables; feature film 1927: Destin; feature film 1929: Brumes d'automne; short 1929: Impressions africaines; short; filmed during making of Sables 1934: Rapt: la séparation des races; feature film 1936: Visages de France; medium length, believed lost 1936: Les Berceaux; short (Cinéphonie), accompanied by Fauré's song 1936: La Fontaine d'Aréthuse; short (Cinéphonie), accompanied by music of Szymanowski 1936: Jeune Fille au jardin; short (Cinéphonie), accompanied by Mompou's music 1937: Franco de port; feature film 1938: L'Avion de minuit; feature film 1938: La Plus Belle Fille du monde; feature film 1939: Quartier sans soleil; feature film (released 1945) 1946: Deux amis; short, based on story by Maupassant 1950: Faits divers à Paris; feature film 1950: Alerte au lait sale; short, commissioned documentary 1950: 22 Boulevard Carnot; short, commissioned documentary 1950: Arrière-saison; short 1952: La Mort du cerf: une chasse à courre; short 1952: Conte de la forêt; short 1953: Le Témoin de minuit; feature film 1955: Mécanisation et remembrement; short, commissioned documentary 1955: Le Crâneur; feature film 1956: Ce soir les jupons volent; feature film 1957: Miss Catastrophe; feature film