- He was made a Fellow of the British Film Institute in recognition of his outstanding contribution to film culture.
- Member of the 'Official Competition' jury at the 40th Cannes International Film Festival in 1987.
- Member of the 'Official Competition' jury at the 33rd Berlin International Film Festival in 1983.
- Klimov completed no more films after Come and See. While he had plans to make more films in the late 1980s, he said in 2000 that he had "lost interest in making films. Everything that was possible I felt I had already done.".
- Member of the 'Official Competition' jury at the 42nd Venice International Film Festival in 1985.
- Elem Klimov was a Soviet and Russian filmmaker. He is best known for his final film, 1985's "Come and See" , which follows a teenage boy in German-occupied Byelorussia during the Great Patriotic War and is often considered one of the greatest films ever made.
- During the Battle of Stalingrad, he, his mother and his baby brother were evacuated from their home and crossed the Volga on a makeshift raft. Klimov would later draw on these experiences for his 1985 film Come and See.
- In 1979, Klimov's wife Larisa Shepitko died in a car accident while directing an ecological fable based on a famous novel by Valentin Rasputin called Farewell to Matyora. A year after her death, Klimov filmed a 25-minute tribute to his wife entitled "Larisa" (1980), then went on to finish the film she had started. Despite being shelved for two years after completion, Farewell was still released in 1983.
- Klimov made a film about Grigori Rasputin called "Agony". The road to release took him nine years and many rewrites. Although finished in 1975, the final edit was not released in the USSR until 1985, due to suppressive measures partly because of its orgy scenes and partly because of its relatively nuanced portrait of Emperor Nicholas II. It had been shown in western Europe a few years before.
- Father of one son, Anton, born in 1971.
- His brother German Klimov stated that his name comes from Elam Harnish - a character of the Burning Daylight novel by Jack London, since their mother was a fan of his.
- His work also notably includes black comedies, children's movies, and period dramas.
- He studied at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography, and was married to film director Larisa Shepitko.
- Klimov's first feature film, 1964's Welcome, or No Trespassing (known in the United Kingdom as No Holiday for Inochkin) was a satire on Soviet bureaucracy in the guise of a children's summer camp adventure story. The film was briefly banned, having been deemed an insult to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; however, the ban was rescinded after Nikita Khrushchev had a private viewing and authorized its release.
- In 1957, Klimov graduated from the Higher Institute of Aviation in Moscow.
- Klimov's second film, Adventures of a Dentist (1965), was a dark comedy about a dentist who is derided by his colleagues for his natural talent of painlessly pulling out teeth. The implication, that society inevitably ostracizes those that are gifted, horrified the censors who told Klimov to change it. When Klimov refused, the film was given the lowest classification, "category three", which meant that it was shown in only 25-78 movie theatres.
- In 1976, Klimov finished a film begun by his teacher Mikhail Romm before the latter's death called "And Still I Believe....".
- He considered a career in journalism before settling on cinema.
- He enrolled at the state film school, the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography, where he studied under acclaimed director Efim Dzigan. While a student at the institute, Klimov met Larisa Shepitko, whom he would later marry.
- In 1986, fresh from the success of "Come and See", and with the changes brought by perestroika in the air, Klimov was chosen by his colleagues to be the First Secretary of the Filmmakers' Union following the V Congress of the Soviet Filmmakers. During the congress all previous heads of the Filmmakers' Union - including Lev Kulidzhanov, Sergei Bondarchuk, Stanislav Rostotsky and others - were overthrown in favor of "liberal" activists. According to some critics and filmmakers, the congress was conducted by Alexander Yakovlev, one of the grey cardinals of Perestroika who was unofficially presented there, consulting the activists from time to time.
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