Andrey Konchalovskiy

The Russian theatre and film director Andrei Konchalovsky is an elder brother of Nikita Mikhalkov, born August, 20, 1937. As a youngster he planned to pursue a career of a musician and learned to play piano but his love for cinema outweighed and he entered VGIK-the major state film school where he studied under Mikhail Romm. At VGIK he met Andrei Tarkovsky, they collaborated on Ivan's Childhood (1962) and _Andrei Rublev_. For his feature debut The First Teacher (1965), he chose the book by Chingiz Aitmatov about the post-1917 Revolution period in the southern Russia. His next film Istoriya Asi Klyachinoy, kotoraya lyubila, da ne vyshla zamuzh (1966) although made in 1966 was not released until a decade later because it failed to comply with the strict requirements of the Russian censorship of the period.