Valeri Rubinchik

Valeri Rubinchik (1940-2011) was a Soviet-Belarusian filmmaker. The son of a musical and theatrical director in his native Minsk, Rubinchik studied in Belarus for a number of years before attending Moscow’s prestigious VGIK film school. Taken on by the state film studio Belarusfilm at the end of the sixties, he gained acclaim after taking over direction of The Last Summer of Childhood when the original director, Nikolai Kalinin, suddenly died. Working in both film and TV movies, Rubinchik’s most famous feature was The Savage Hunt of King Stakh (1980), a rare example of a Soviet horror film, based on the eponymous novel by celebrated Belarusian author Ulazdimir Karatkievich. His final film was Nanjing Landscape (2006).