Abram Room


Abram Matveyevich Room was a Russian film director. He was a People's Artist of the RSFSR and winner of the Stalin Prize.

Biography

In 1914-1917 he studied at the St. Petersburg Bekhterev Psychoneurological Research Institute, between 1917 and 1922 at the medical faculty of Saratov State University. From 1917 he worked in Saratov in the arts department as professor and rector of the Higher theatrical art workshops. Since 1923 he was the director of Vsevolod Meyerhold’s Theatre of the Revolution in Moscow, director and teacher of the Higher Pedagogical School of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee in the Kremlin. Since 1924 he was the director at the studios Goskino, Sovkino, Soyuzkino. Since 1936 he was director at the studio Mosfilm. In 1925-1934 he taught at VGIK as a senior lecturer.
Room's best known film is Bed and Sofa after a screenplay by Lev Kuleshov and Viktor Shklovsky. In the film, a woman who is married to a construction worker has an affair with their lodger. The film tracks the evolution of a housewife into a strong liberated woman, which was very unusual for its time. Another notable title is The Ghost That Never Returns
The first movie he directed was The Vodka Chase in 1924.
He directed the first talking picture in the Soviet Union, the 1930 documentary The Five Year Plan. The other films he directed were Traitor, Ruts, Criminals, Squadron No. 5, Invasion, V gorakh Jugoslavii, School for Scandal, The Garnet Bracelet, Late Flowers, and The Untimely Man.
Cited in the German book Texte zur Theorie des Films :
"A. Room, declared opponent of the concept of Sergey Eisenstein, postulated in his essay Moi kinoubezhdeniya in: Soviet screen, 1926, m. 8, p. 5: Prior importance in film must be the living human... , exactly that what Eisenstein declined."

Selected filmography