Actor, Director, Screenwriter. An important pioneer of Russian Cinema. Born Vladimir Rostislavovich Gardin in Moscow, he made his performing debut in 1898 and was associated with the Kommissarzhevskaya and Meyerhold theatrical troupes. In 1907 he formed the Free Theatre in Terioki for the purpose of producing plays banned by the Czar's censors, an enterprise that nearly landed him in prison. His liberal creative tendencies eventually drew him to films as a director in 1913. Specializing in literary adaptations, such as "The Kreutzer Sonata" (1914), "Anna Karenina" (1914), "Ghosts" (1915), "War and Peace" (1915), and "Petersburg Slums" (1915), he continued to anger the authorities with his frank treatment of adult themes; the controversy made him one of the very few Russian filmakers of his time who was known by name to the general public. Unlike most of his colleagues in the business, Gardin welcomed the 1917 Revolution and offered his services to the new Bolshevik regime. Seizing on Lenin's dictum that "For us, film is the most important art", he secured government support in founding the world's first film school, the State Institute of Film (VGIK) in Moscow, and was its first president from 1919 to 1920. He also helped build the Ukrainian Cinema by establishing studios in Kiev and was an important influence on director Vsevolod Pudovkin, who worked for a time as his assistant. Gardin's films of the 1920s - among them "Sickle and Hammer" (1921), "The Landowner" (1924), "Czar and Poet" (1927), and "400 Million" (1929) - were progressive in political matter and in style, but with the arrival of talkies he gave up directing for acting, signing a contract with the Lenfilm Studio in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). He went on to play notable character roles in the features "Dead Souls" (1929), "Counterplan" (1932), "Peasants" (1935), "Dubrovsky" (1936), "Pugachev" (1938), and "Peter the Great" (1939). He was twice named People's Artist of the USSR, in 1935 and 1947. Gardin's memoirs (two volumes, published in 1949 and 1952) offer valuable historical insights into late Czarist and early Soviet movies.