Roman Lazarevich Karmen (Russian: Роман Лазаревич Кармен) (16 November 1906 Odessa – 28 April 1978 Moscow) was a Soviet war camera-man and film director and one of the most influential figures in documentary film making; insofar as his propaganda is concerned he could be considered USSR's answer to Leni Riefenstahl, though the comparison is by no means absolute.

[edit] Communist propaganda

Karmen was a true believer in Communism, and roamed the world portraying the Spanish Civil War, the battles for Moscow and Leningrad in World War II, the First Indochina War, and the rise of Communism in South East Asia in the 50's and in South America during the 60's.

Karmen was also granted personal access to the emergence of Communist leaders China's Mao Tse-Tung, Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh, Cuba's Fidel Castro and Chile's Salvador Allende.

[edit] Controversy

Karmen's documentary methods were both influential and controversial, his renowned technical ability captured the emotion of war and the repetition of key shots and framings between film projects became a hallmark, but he would often blur the lines of Cinéma vérité by restaging key battles, including the liberation of Leningrad (Ленинград в борьбе, 1942) and the siege of Dien Bien Phu (Вьетнам, 1955), and reconstructing the 1956 landing in Cuba of revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro as a first person documentary.

In 2001, French documentary directors Dominique Chapuis and Patrick Barbéris produced a 90mn investigation about Karmen, titled Roman Karmen, A Cineast In The Revolution's Service^[1]. The following year Barbéris (his co-author Chapuis passed by in late 2001) published a critical portrait Roman Karmen, A Red Legend^[2].

[edit] Filmography

De Castries' bunker in Вьетнам, 1955

• 1939: Испания (Spain), about the Spanish civil war
• 1942: Ленинград в борьбе (Leningrad in the fight), about the Siege of Leningrad
• 1942: Разгром немецких войск под Москвой (Crushing defeat of German troops in the environs of Moscow), about the Battle of Moscow
• 1945: Берлин (Berlin), about the Battle of Berlin
• 1946: Суд народов (Judgment of the peoples), about the Nuremberg trial. An English language version of the film called The Nuremberg Trials was also made.
• 1953: Повесть о нефтяниках Каспия (Narrative about the oil-industry workers of the Caspian region)
• 1955: Вьетнам (Vietnam), about the Siege of Dien Bien Phu
• 1956: Утро Индии (Indian Morning)
• 1958: Широка страна моя… (Wide is my country…), first Soviet widescreen motion picture
• 1959: Покорители моря (Conquerors of the sea)
• 1961: Пылающий остров (Blazing island), about the Bay of Pigs Invasion
• 1965: Великая отечественная (Great Patriotic War), 20th anniversary of the end of the Great Patriotic War
• 1968: Гренада, Гренада, Гренада моя… (Grenada, Grenada, my Grenada…), co-directed with Konstantin Simonov, about the Grenadan war of independence
• 1969: Товарищ Берлин (Berlin Kamarad)
• 1972: Пылающий континент (Blazing continent)

[edit] Notes

[edit] See also

• Konstantin Simonov
• Leni Riefenstahl
• Frank Capra
• Pierre Schoendoerffer
• Flags of Our Fathers (film)

[edit] External links

• Roman Karmen at the Internet Movie Database
• (French) French army's Press Information Service SPI cameraman Lucien Millet (left) and Roman Karmen (right) at the Trung Gia conference, Vietnam, July 4th 1954 (French Defense Ministry archives ECPAD)
• (French) Sous l’œil d’un cinéaste soviétique by Cindy Cao
• (French) Extended filmography
• (Russian) Full filmography