Nina Agadzhanova-Shutko

Nina Agadzhanova–Shutko (27 October / 8 November 1889 – 14 December 1974) was a Soviet revolutionary, screenwriter, and film director. She is most widely recognized for writing The Year 1905, the original screenplay from which Battleship Potemkin was created.

Biography

Political work Agadzhanova first joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (which would later become the CPSU) in 1907 while studying philosophy and history at university in Ekaterinodar. From 1907 to 1914 conducted illegal work for the party, helping to create Bolshevik networks between Voronezh, Oryol, Moscow, Iranovo-Voznesensk, and Petersburg. After the revolution, she was drafted to participate in an underground propaganda mission among the White Guard forces in Novorossiysk and Rostov-on-Don. In 1919 she served as a member of the underground Don Oblast committee of the CPSU, until she was drafted to become the executive secretary of the Byelorussian Revolutionary Military Committee in 1920. The committee was headed by Anatoly Lunacharsky, the Soviet People's Commissar for Enlightenment, and members of the committee included Agadznahova's close friend Kazimir Malevich and her husband Kirill Shutko.

Initially, The Year 1905 was conceived as a coverage of several events of 1905 including: The Russo-Japanese War; the Bloody Sunday massacre; popular uprisings which occurred in both rural and urban areas across the nation; the general strike and the backlash from the Russian state; a mutiny on the Russian battleship Potemkin; counter-Revolutionary and anti-Jewish pogroms; and the development of a workers' resistance movement in Krasnaya Presnya. In an essay written in 1945 for a collection to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of The Battleship Potemkin, Eisenstein wrote: "[Nina] was the first Bolshevik civilian I had met - all the others had sat on military committees or they were 'senior staff'. She was quite simply a human being... She instilled in me a true sense of the historical revolutionary past". In 1933, Agadznahova co-wrote The Deserter alongside Aleksandr Lazebnikov and M. Krasnostavsky. The film was directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin. She collaborated on Pudovkin on another project in 1934 titled The Intervention, but this film did not make it to production. Between 1930 and 1936 Agadshanova worked as a script consultant at the Mezhrabpomfilm studios in Moscow. In 1945, she began teaching screenwriting at the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography, where she worked for several years.

Filmography Year English TitleCredit Notes 1925In The White Roses(In The Whites' Rear or Behind White Lines) Writer Directed by Boris Chaikovskii and Ol'ga Rakhmanova. 1925Battleship PotemkinCo-writerBased on an excerpt from the screenplay The Year 1905 1926Krasnaia Presnaia Writer Based on an excerpt from the screenplay The Year 1905.Directed by Abram Room and Leo Mur.1929Two-Buildi-TwoCo-writer & co-directorCo-directed and co-written by Lev Kuleshov. 1929The Sailor Ivan Gallai WriterDirected by Matrol Ivan Gallais. 1933The Deserter Co-writerCo-written with M. Krasnostavsky and Aleksandr Lazebnikov. Directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin.