Maksim Munzuk will be in a book published for Akira Kurosawa’s 100th birthday

2010 will be a major jubileum for the creators of the legendary film, an “Oscar” laureate, “Dersu Uzala”. Vladimir Vasilyev, the Moscow colleague of the Japanese director, prepared a book “Emperor of Japanese Cinema” for Akira Kurosawa’s 100^th anniversary of birth. Among other things, the book tells of the legendary Tuvan actor who portrayed the title role in the Oscar winning film, Maksim Monguzhukovich Munzuk.

Vasilyev published a book about the work on this film from the end of the 70’s to the early 80’s, “Director’s Notes” (Zapiski rezhissera: “Maksim Munzuk-Dersu Uzala” and “Trip to The Screen”).

Guests from the Republic Tuva visited the Moscow director in Moscow. “Beside the main Japanese anniversary, the 95^th birthday of Maksim Munzuk is also approaching, as well as the 75^th anniversary of the National Artist of USSR, a great friend and partner in the film “Dersu Uzala” – Yurii Mefodievich Solomin, the director explained worriedly, - naturally the book will describe Maksim Munzuk’s work in detail.”

Vasilyev intends to prepare thoroughly for these dates, in co-operation with the family of the famous Tuvan actor, his daughters Svetlana Munzuk, who is the leader of the M.Munzuk Charity Foundation, and the director of the eco-festival “Living Footprints of Dersu”, and Galina Munzuk, who is a delegate of the Legislative Branch of the Great Khural of the republic, and founder of the foundation “Mama”.

Remember that the selection of the actor for the title role in the film “Dersu Uzala” was far from easy for the Japanese director. The cameraman Fedor Dobronravov has interesting memories of this event.

“Months went by, but there still was no actor for the role. Many showed up, tested for the role, even a singer who sang a big hit of those times, “I”ll take you to the tundra”. Kurosawa was procrastinating and constantly watched Soviet movies. One day he was watching one of little known films, and suddenly he jumped up and pointed out with his finger, in a crowd scene, a running, bow-legged little guy. Nobody was able to identify this person, not even the director of the film. In the course of investigation it turned out that it was Maxim Munzuk from the Tuvan Musical Theatre. Kurosawa gave an order to Dobronravov and another cameraman to bring this person.

“In the Tuvan theatre, we were told that we could not see Munzuk because he had gone hunting. Almost a week went by, we were expected to go back and we were getting ready to leave the next day, when a strange man came into our room, right in his hunting outfit. Nobody could say that he was handsome, so we took along to Moscow two other actors, who, in our opinion, had more pleasant looks. But everybody in Tuva turned out to be hunters”, remembers Dobronravov. The testing did not work out well at first– the cameramen started out with the better-looking actors. Kurosawa was displeased and kept growling.

The third one was Munzuk.