Alexander Bashirov

Born 24 September 1955 in the village of Sogom, Tyumen Region.

In 1972 he came to Leningrad, applied to the first training college he found and began to  acquire the skills of a floor-tiler and bricklayer. He served in the army, entering the tank division. He worked there as an artist, drawing the portrait of Leonid Ilich Brezhnev on tank helmets.

He entered the film scholl VGIK in the Director’s workshop of Igor’ Talankin and was in great demand as an actor from his colleagues at VGIK who would employ him in their etudes. After creative disagreement with Talankin he transferred to the workshop of Anatoly Vasiliev in his second year and completed his studies with him in 1989. During his studies he played a small role as a freak in "Wild Pigeon" by Sergei Soloviev, and then аppeared as an unattractive dwarfish, bogus Air Force Major in the film "ASSA", becoming a cult personality. After receiving his degree from VGIK, he left Russia with his American wife (also a graduate of VGIK) to live in the US. He studied in New York for two years, visiting Sergei Soloviev from time to time to work on the filming of "House under the Starry Skies". In the US his son Christopher was born. Two years later Bashirov separated with his wife and returned to Leningrad.

At the start of the 1990s he was filmed in clips (he later worked as a director), staged concerts of his rock group and at his rock festival "Major Al. Bashirov" (Kiev, 1994), took part in “Pop Mechanics” concerts, played in Sergei Kuryokhin’s show "Kolobok" (Baltiskiy Dom theatre, 1994). In 1996 he organized the "Deboshir Film Studio".

In 1998 Bashirov founded Deboshir Film Festival ("Pure Dreams"), a forum of alternative cinema.