Biography
Pavel Kogan was born on July 9, 1931, in Leningrad. He earned two external high school diplomas from Leningrad State University and GITIS, and worked as a silent performer at the Kirov (now Mariinsky) Opera. By a twist of fate, he entered the film industry and directed over 35 documentary films. Among these were works like “The Band of Military Tunes” (1968), co-created with P. Mostovoy, which won the Golden Dove at the Leipzig Festival. Another notable film was the feature-length “Mutiny in Sobibor” (1989), which was a personal revelation for Pavel as it was his first encounter with Jewish themes and the Holocaust of European Jewry. This film was also the first international Soviet-Dutch collaboration and won the Joris Ivens Prize at the Amsterdam International Festival in 1989.
For two decades, Pavel taught film directing at the Leningrad Institute of Theatre, Music and Cinematography. He also hosted the “Cinema and Time” show on Leningrad TV for over ten years, earning the nickname “Kapler of Leningrad.”
In 1992, Pavel became seriously ill. Medical treatments in Russia, Germany, and Israel proved ineffective. He passed away on November 3, 1998, and was laid to rest in Komarovo.
Pavel once reflected on his life: “I was the third child in my family. My older brother went off to war and was killed in the first month. During the city's siege, my sister, then a university student, served in the army's anti-aircraft defense. My father, a clockmaker, died of starvation during the siege and was buried in a mass grave at Piskaryovskoye Cemetery. My mother passed away soon after the siege was lifted, in the post-war period. At 14, I began working evenings making hairpins, knitting fishermen’s nets, and assembling crates. Gradually, I completed secondary school, hoping to enter a linguistics department, but it was already a lost cause. ‘With a name like yours,’ they said, ‘you have no future here.’
It was 1948. I enrolled at university to study political economy, a field no one coveted. But living on a scholarship alone was impossible. A young woman told me I could work at the Kirov Theatre as part of the supernumerary cast, explaining, ‘With a black stocking over your face, you’ll play a Negro boy in the performance of Aida.’ I earned 40 rubles a month. As a child, I had been admitted to cello classes and apparently had perfect pitch, but we couldn’t afford the instrument, so I switched to the cornet-piston. I learned to play until I broke a tooth, but my passion for brass music endured. While at the theatre, I memorized the entire opera repertoire. I also had a literary bent; one of my sketches was published by Boris Polevoy in Yunost magazine, who encouraged me to continue writing. On stage, I served top hats and gloves to Lemeshev as Lensky. I was fortunate to be dismissed from the theatre after ten years—once again due to my nationality.
It was 1959. I was walking along the Kryukov Canal and noticed, nearby—though I hadn’t realized it before—the Lenkinokhronika studio (Leningrad Documentary). I forced my way in to become an assistant stage manager—”
