Olga Preobrazhenskaya

Russian film director, screenwriter, and actress.

Olga Ivanovna Preobrazhenskaya (24.07.1881, Moscow – 30.10.1971, ibid.) was a Russian and Soviet stage and film actress, film director, screenwriter and pedagogue; she was one of the first female film directors in the world, and the first female film director in Russia. Honoured Artist of the RSFSR (1935).

Between 1901 and 1906, Preobrazhenskaya attended the Moscow Art Theatre Studio, after which she worked in provincial theatres. In 1913, she made her film debut in The Keys to Happiness, as Mania Yeltsova. One of her first works as a director was The Peasant Girl (1916); Preobrazhenskaya worked on this film alongside her husband, the director Vladimir Rostislavovich Gardin. After its release, the film received high praise; however, as it was a female director’s debut film, it was met with scepticism, and on posters and in reviews her name was often written with a masculine ending or attributed to other directors. Following the October Revolution (1917), she taught at the First State Film School (now VGIK) for several years, and was one of the founders of its acting school.