Dimitri Devyatkin

Independent Producer, Writer, United States                        

Website        www.devyatkin.org 
Email            dimitri@devyatkin.org 

YouTube       http://www.youtube.com/dimitrid            

Vimeo           https://vimeo.com/devyatkin

Wikipedia      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimitri_Devyatkin


Film and TV Producer: Feature Films and Documentaries

Dimitri is a video pioneer, media artist, public speaker and story-teller. His programs were broadcast on ABC, PBS, British Channel Four TV, German WDR, French FR3, TF1 and Russian 1st Channel.

Programs include:
(Click on titles)

Media Shuttle: New York-Moscowwith
Nam June Paik, WNET Channel 13 New York broadcast,

Video From Russia: The People Speak
Emmy nominated in Los Angeles, aired 4 times on KABC Los Angeles, on WABC New York, Channel Four UK, France FR3, WDR Germany. (see reviews below)

Verkola: A Village in Northern Russia
on PBS in the US, Channel Four UK, French TV
2

El Salvador: Names of War 
Portrait of the guerrillas during El Salvador’s civil war

It’s Raining in Brighton Beachclassic comedy directed by Leonid Gaidai. Dimitri was Line Producer.  Named one of 100 best Russian films, 1992-2013.

See Interview (translation) in AFISHA magazine. Dec. 2013 about making this film.
Original Russian -
http://mag.afisha.ru/stories/100-glavnyh-russkih-filmov/


 

Scriptwriter/Producer - feature films, historical drama, documentary

·         Ferocious   

       ·         Taste My Revenge, Money from Heaven and Funny Stories


Broadcast Operations & Engineering
ABC Television Network
, New York, HD, Digital Video, live programs, Sports, Drama, News, union member NABET CWA, May 2006 – January 2010

Executive Producer, Manager:
Streamedia Communications, Inc. New York Vice President, Europe, based in Amsterdam and New York, 1999 –2000

Metromedia International, US,
-created cable TV channels, Eurosport Russia, Nickelodeon, Director, Special Projects, Cable TV, based in Moscow, created Russian language channels, General Director “Digital Dubbing Services,” managed staff of 20, held power of attorney, 1994 –1999

 

TV news, journalist – producer, associate producer:

Worldwide Television News, London, Producer in Russia, collapse of USSR, Lithuania, Estonia, Armenia, 1986 – 1988


CBS News With Dan Rather, CBS Evening News, Sunday Morning, Associate Producer, Moscow bureau, corres­pondent Barry Peterson, Gorbachev-Reagan summit meetings, Russian artists “Mitki,” 1985 – 1986
                                                



Line Producer, Feature Films: 6 films for Mosfilm, classic comedy director Leonid Gaidai, “It’s Raining in Brighton Beach 1992, and director Sergei SolovyevThe House Under the Starry Skyand Prigovor a crime drama.

 


Video artist- collaborated with Nam June Paik on a WNET broadcast program, documented famous “Fluxus”artists’ performances and played a central role with Woody and Steina Vasulka, in creating the New York video theatre “The Kitchen.” Organized the trailblazing First International Computer Arts Festival at The Kitchen and won a New York State CAPS grant for video art.  Worked with Charlotte Moorman to organize the New York Avant Garde Festival on the riverboat “Alexander Hamilton” and was personally acquainted with John Lennon. Dimitri is listed in Jonas Mekas' "Birth of a Nation" DVD (1997) as one of the "essential nation of cinema" of American film making from 1955-1996.


Education

            City University of New York, Baccalaureate Degree, Major in Cinema and Russian Language

            Moscow Cinema Institute, VGIK, Documentary Film Directing, under director Roman Lazeravich Karmen

            Moscow State University, intensive Russian Language, history, geography

            St. John’s College, Annapolis, Maryland, classical philosophy, literature, Ancient Greek, French

            Bronx High School of Science, New York, micro-biology, calculus, journalism, French

 

Other training

            Institut Für Sprachvermittlung, Bonn, Germany, Intensive German language course

            Screenwriters Boot Camp, New York, Screenplay writing course

            Avid Media Composer, non-linear digital editing, City University of New York

            Business Accounting for Executives, Arthur Andersen offices, Moscow

 

Languages

            English                         mother language, public speaker, lecturer, teacher, writer, editor

            Russian                        fluent, formal and colloquial spoken, reading.

            French                          intermediate, functional in work, conversation

            German                        intermediate, B2 certificate

 

Video Exhibitions and Presentations


Museum of Modern Art, New York

Museum of Modern Art, Paris

International Young Film Forum, Berlin and the Berlin Film Festival (twice)

Lenbach Haus Museum, Munich

Moscow Film Festival, Dom Kino (twice)

Anna Akhmatova Museum, St. Petersburg

Festival d’Avignon, France

American Cultural Centers, Paris & London

Amerika Haus, Nürnberg, Frankfurt

College of Architects, Barcelona (twice)

Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis

The Kitchen, New York, co-director 2 years

Everson Museum, Syracuse

Syracuse University Visiting Artist (twice)

New York University

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

State University of New York, Purchase

Ramapo College, New Jersey

Bonn International School, Germany

Staatliches Museum Schwerin, Germany, 2014



Interests

  History, political science, current affairs, economy, media, sciences, information technology, art, music, cinema.            

 
    Violin – played electric violin, 2 months with jazz legend, Rahsaan Roland Kirk at Both/And Café, San Francisco; at age 17, classical violin, age 12-17, played in Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, New York City High School Orchestra.       


 

Press reviews:

“Tapes of Dimitri Devyatkin. Finally an interesting and intelligent sensibility in video. I really liked Devyatkin’s tapes…. There is an intelligence and sensitivity reflected in everything he does. The first video artist whose work I want to see again.”
Jones Mekas, Village VoiceMovie Journal” 1972

 

 “Devyatkin’s work… is situated on the frontiers of video art and video documentary. As the separation between these directions deepens, Devyatkin’s work integrates the two domains in a totally personal manner.”  
Genviève Van Cauwenberge, Professor, critic, Liege, Belgium – 1978

 

 “Devyatkin’s access to Soviet life was through friends who would fetch him from his room and push him in a taxi, telling him there was something he just had to tape. The result is an unusual and revealing look at how ordinary Soviet citizens live.” David Dupot, The Sunday Rutland Herald – 1980

 

 “Devyatkin’s documentary style moves lyrically rather than narratively. No political points are made… Their perspectives are real and human. They are successful and exceptional.”… "Regardless of your interest or lack thereof in video art, The Sordid Affair is a loaded color warhead of a tape taken straight from former President Richard Nixon's infamous first Watergate speech. … Devyatkin explains, "My TV did something strange to Nixon's image. When he lied, the TV wobbled his face and the denser his lies became, the more abstract became the image of his face until it was hardly a face anymore.".... The Sordid Affair is an historical grotesque tragi-comedy that sticks voodoo pins into the American memory. Remember to laugh when you hear line after line of incredibly sick rhetoric." David Skarjune, The Minnesota Daily, Minneapolis - November 21, 1980

 

 “KABC’s special tonight is the one to watch. It’s as intriguing as its title suggests, “Video From Russia: The People Speak” … a rare opportunity to hear spontaneous comments from people who are lumped together in political rhetoric as our enemy. It is fascinating, but more than that it is humanizing. There are recognizable scenes of people shopping in the open market, of citizens paying their respects at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Volgograd, of people dancing to American rock music at a disco, of a young woman with safety pins in her ears who says she is part of the punk movement.”
Lee Margulies, The Los Angeles Times  July 26, 1984

 

 “By keeping this special simple and small, producer-director Dimitri Devyatkin has come up with a winner. All he tried to do was give an honest, human look at an unscientific sampling of Russians, and that’s just what he’s done. … Americans see themselves and their countrymen in these Russians. …The show gives us clear portraits of people recognizable from everyone’s lives – the cigarette-puffing antiestablishment juvenile; the proud, ornery older folks, lecturing about the past and warning about the future; the unsophisticated laborer, whose common-sense appraisal of world affairs shows more insight than an embassyful of diplomats…  a clear look at another nation.” Thomas B. Bierbaum, “VARIETY”July 30, 1984

 

“Wherever the camera crew goes - a farmers' market, an exhibition of arms, a disco, an amusement park, a children's playground, a church service - the people interviewed call for peace and friendship, usually in that order. Most express admiration for America and displeasure with the Reagan Administration, which, they say, is promoting war between the two countries. Several recall the hardships of World War II and speak of the horrors of nuclear war.”  Walter Goodman, The New York Times -- VIDEO FROM RUSSIA
     June 12, 1985  -- full article > http://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/12/arts/video-from-russia.htm