Isay Gibalevich

Isay Khanonovich Gibalevich was born on 30 October 1923 in Kokand (now in the Fergana Region). He took part in the Great Patriotic War: for his service at the front he received the Medal “For Courage” and the Order of the Red Star (1943), the Order of Glory, 3rd class (1944), and a second Order of the Red Star (1945).

He joined the film industry in 1947, first as an assistant director and assistant cameraman and then as a cameraman. From 1953 to 1988 — thirty-five years — he was a director at the Tashkent studio of documentary and popular-science films (later the Studio of Popular-Science and Newsreel-Documentary Films of Uzbekistan).

His name appears in the credits as a cameraman from 1958, and his first film as a director was “In the World of Darkness” (1959). Over the following three decades he made dozens of documentary and popular-science films, often shooting them himself as well.

His subjects were varied: agriculture and irrigation (“The Karshi Steppe”, “The Hungry Steppe”, “Irrigation of Uzbekistan”), life in Tashkent and its metro (“They Are Building the Metro”, “There Is a Metro in Tashkent”), Karakalpakstan (“Soviet Karakalpakia”, “My Karakalpakia”), films about scientists and new technology (“Academician Abdullaev”, “The Life of a Big Molecule”), and newsreels of official events and festivals.

In 1975 he was named Honoured Worker of Culture of the Uzbek SSR, and in 1985 he received the Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd class. Gibalevich died in 1996.