Endri Keko (1924-1989) | Documentary film director and screenwriter!

Endri Keko (1924-1989)
Director, screenwriter!

Born in Boston (USA), on May 31, but returned to Albania when he was 9 years old. He took part in the National Liberation Movement and stood out for his talent in partisan theater groups.

1950-1952 attends the two-year course for documentary filmmakers in the Soviet Union. Keko shoots together with his teacher, the director I. Kopalin, the documentary about Albania: “Miqési e pathyeshme”, 1951; “Rugé e lavdishme”, 1952; “Shqipéria”, 1953 “Lulézo, Shqipéri”, 1959. “Shatérvani i Bahcisarajt” (1951) is his first film as a documentary, which was the subject of the show with the same title of the Albanian ballet troupe.
He married the well-known film female director Xhanfize Keko*.

E. Keko has a very wide creativity, which includes 68 documentary films, 35 documentary films and 38 newsreels. He can be called the founder of documentary film types by creating a cinematographic opus on Albania and Albanians.

As a cinematographer of the beginnings of this type of film, he also became a promoter of different genres such as film-portage, film portrait and biographical film, pamphlet, musical and historical film, film poem, etc.

In his films, the loyalty to the fact, the real historical event and the document is noticeable, bringing into focus the main events that took place in the country, described simply and in an Iconic manner, without embellishments and excessive moralizing, political and rhetorical overlays.

The interweaving of the text with the realistic presentation of the film image created a sense of realistic in the audience. One of his first and beautiful documentary films was “Light on Albania” (1958), in which such features as: clarity of ideas, drama, romantic pathos, accuracy of data, pleasant journalistic language appear as the beginnings of his individuality, which would occupy the path of consideration in other subsequent films, such as: “Spring of the Ninth”, “On the verge of life”, “Mountain Album”, “People and Works”, “Tare Brothers”, “Mountain Village School”, etc.

E. Keko is a cinematographer with high sensitivity for nature, the lyrical and poetic landscape, but, on the other hand, in accordance with the topics he deals with, he insists equally on conflicts and strong contrasts, conveying to the viewer the drama of the fact, as “With a sword in hand”, “Your way comrade”, “Resurrection”, “Lumja ti moj Shqipéri”, “On the partisan paths” etc.

He has won many awards, among them: the Republic Award three times with the films “Light on Albania”, “In the flames of the revolution” and “Your river, my Albania”;

He won the Cup of the III Albanian Film Festival (1979) with “Lumja ti, moj Shqipéri”, and with “The Dance of Eagles” (1960) he received an honorary diploma at the International Film Festival in Leipzig and a bronze medal at the International Film Festival in Paris (I962).

In addition to being a director, E. Keko has also been a screenwriter of documentary films, with over 25 of them. A complementary feature of his individuality has been the help he gave the diversity of critical and aesthetic thought on the progress of the art of cinema, especially the documentary film, of its problematic of the growth of artistic perfection.

He was also the director of the feature film “The Emperor’s Bed” based on the poem of the same name by Dritéro Agolli.
Keko was given the title “People’s Artist”.

It was published for the first time in May 2020

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Albanian cinematography in activity since 2013
Reference: Encyclopaedia, Theater and Albanian Cinematography” – Toena 2009 / J. Papagjoni / p. 2015-2016 .

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