Biography
Esfir Tobak (also known as Esther Tobak or Esfir Veniaminovna Tobak) was a Soviet film editor. Born in Odessa in 1908, she began working in 1924 editing negatives at the Odessa film studio. She later worked at the Kiev studio and, from 1931, at Mosfilm in Moscow, where she remained until her retirement in 1982.
Tobak collaborated closely with Sergei Eisenstein as editor or assistant on Alexander Nevsky (1938), Ivan the Terrible, Part I (1944) and Part II: The Boyars' Plot (1958), and Bezhin Meadow. She also edited Moscow Laughs (1934) and, with Grigori Aleksandrov, co-edited the reconstructed ¡Qué Viva México! (1979). Among other credits, she worked with Alexander Dovzhenko on Earth and with directors including Mikhail Romm and Samson Samsonov. She was named Merited Cultural Worker of the RSFSR in 1974 and died in Moscow in 2004.
