Odelsha Agishev

Odelsha Aleksandrovich Agishev was born in Tashkent on 10 August 1939. He finished the Tashkent Suvorov military school in 1956 and graduated from the screenwriting faculty of the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in 1962.

His first films were made at the Uzbekfilm studio. His name became known in the mid-1960s through his work with the director Elyor Ishmukhamedov: Ishmukhamedov’s diploma film “Tenderness” (1966) and “The Lovers” (1969) opened a creative partnership that lasted for years.

For the script of “Extraordinary Commissar” (1970, directed by Ali Khamraev) Agishev received the Hamza State Prize of the Uzbek SSR in 1971, and in 1975 the title of Honoured Art Worker of the Uzbek SSR. His scripts were also behind “Meetings and Partings”, “The Last Meeting”, “Love and Fury” and “What Years We Have!”.

For “The Youth of a Genius” (1982), a joint production of Uzbekfilm and Tajikfilm whose script he wrote with Ishmukhamedov, he was awarded the USSR State Prize in 1984. From 1985 he led a screenwriting workshop at VGIK, becoming a professor in 1999; his students include Pyotr Lutsik, Aleksey Samoryadov, Aleksandr Gonorovsky, Ilya Rubinstein and Vladimir Moiseyenko. In 1986–1994 he was a secretary of the Union of Cinematographers of the USSR and then of Russia.

From 1997 Agishev also wrote for documentary film: with the director Andrey Osipov he worked on the cycle “Legends of the Silver Age”, about Maximilian Voloshin, Andrey Bely and Marina Tsvetaeva; films of the cycle won the Nika award three times. His script for “Steppe Express” (2005) received a prize at the Golden Minbar festival, and in the same year he was given the Russian Government Prize in Culture. In 2001 he was named Honoured Art Worker of the Russian Federation.

Since 2013 he has headed the screenwriting workshop at the Higher Courses for Scriptwriters and Directors. In 2015 he received the “Slovo” screenwriting award “For Fidelity to the Profession”.