Master of Puppet Making

A documentary film about Ekaterina Beklesheva, who created a unique soft mimicking puppet. Beklesheva began creating her puppets with lifelike human facial expressions even before the war, and in the early 1940s she made two sets of military dolls. She continued making puppets throughout her life—her apartment housed characters from "Dead Souls," "The Queen of Spades," and "Don Quixote." After the war, Beklesheva’s puppets took to professional stages—on television shone Venus Pustomelskaya, Andryushka and the dwarf, Dimochka and the drunkard. Today many of them are preserved in the Museum of Victory and the Obraztsov State Academic Central Puppet Theatre Museum. The film carefully gathers memories about Ekaterina Beklesheva, who lived through several wars—the First World War, Civil War, and Second World War. Her student, artist Elena Kolat, and artistic director of Moscow Puppet Theatre Boris Goldovskiy tell about the life of the artist and her main passion.