Klara Yusupjanova
Born on December 29, 1940, in the village of Kara-Suu, Naryn region.
She graduated from the Frunze Medical School. There was a time when she combined her work as a nurse, worked for a year as a paramedic, attended evening school, and participated in artistic amateur performances. She dreamed of becoming a director.
In 1963, she graduated from the Tashkent State Institute of Theatre and Art named after A.N. Ostrovsky and completed advanced courses for directors and screenwriters in Moscow (1970). From 1966 to 1968, she interned at the Moscow Drama Theatre named after Konstantin Stanislavsky. Her film debut was the role of the hitchhiker Kalipa in the film "Heat" (1963) directed by Larisa Shepitko, based on the story "The Camel's Eye" by Chingiz Aitmatov. At the film festival of the cinematic arts of the Central Asian republics and Kazakhstan, "Heat" took first place, and Klara Yusupjanova and Bolot Shamsiev shared the award for Best Acting Debut.
Yusupjanova appeared in films by Kyrgyz and Russian filmmakers such as "The First Teacher," "The Most Obedient," "The Tenant," "Chronicle of the Night," "Gift," and others.
Since 1971, she worked as a documentary film director at the "Kyrgyzfilm" studio, where she filmed issues of the newsreel "Soviet Kyrgyzstan," and documentary films such as "Osh Weavers" (1973), "Hello, Jailoo" (1977), "Kumys" (1978), "The Shepherd and the Fog" (1980), "City" (1982), "The Tiger Took Two Cows on Jailoo" (1986), and "Valley and People" (1987).
In the late 1980s, Klara Yusupjanova decided to try her hand at feature films, starting the production of the film "Aeroplane." The film was not completed.
In 2001, the Kyrgyz woman was an honored guest at the XXIII International Cinema du Reel Festival at the Pompidou Center in Paris. There, her film "The Shepherd and the Fog" was successfully screened as part of the Central Asian retrospective. In 2003, the director attended the International Film Festival in Switzerland.
She passed away on July 22, 2006, at the age of 66.
Women of Kyrgyzstan
