Aleksandr Alekseevich Khanzhonkov (; — 26 September 1945) was a pioneering Russian cinema entrepreneur, film director and screenwriter. He is known for producing Defence of Sevastopol, Russia's first feature film, as well as Ladislas Starevich's ground-breaking stop motion animation. Most of his career was in Russian Empire. During 1923-1926 he worked in the Soviet Union, where his career ended with a financial scandal, however his past achievements earned him a personal pension and an apartment from the state. Early years Khanzhonkov was born in the small village of Khanzhonkova of the Don Host Oblast (modern-day Makiivka, Donetsk Oblast) into a noble family of Don Cossacks. His father Alexei Petrovich Khanzhonkov was a landlord who went bankrupt. His mother Paraskeva Sergeevna Khanzhonkova (née Dmitrieva) came from a colonel's family who owned a Singer shop in Moscow. The noble title was first granted to Aleksandr's great-grandfather Vasily Khanzhonkov. He studied in the Novocherkassk Cossack School and was sent to serve in the Moscow host after his graduation in 1886. He took part in the Russo-Japanese War which undermined his health. In 1905, upon a discharge from military training due to health issues, Khanzhonkov sat in on a screening of Train Pulling into a Station by the Lumiere Brothers. Career In 1906 Khanzhonkov founded Russia's first cinema factory, A. Khanzhonkov and Co., whose main financial backer was Ivan Ozerov, an influential banker and member of the Russian State Council. Initial productions were shot on stage in the vein of Melies and were overshadowed by the work of Alexander Drankov. Known for his unabashed commercialism, Drankov would remain a competitor up to the revolution of 1917. It wasn't until 1911 that Khanzhonkov's factory would receive widespread acclaim with the release of Defence of Sevastopol. One of the earliest full length Russian feature films, it was equally notable for its technical aspects. By the end of 1912, Khanzhonkov had established a permanent studio in Moscow and went on to produce over a hundred films over the course of the next several years. Much of Khanzhonkov's work during this time period went "virtually unseen by the Russian masses" and often took aim at aristocratic sensibilities or adapted great Russian novels of the 19th century. Nonetheless, Khanzhonov helped create many standards in Russian cinema production; the first confirmed use of artificial light in the Russian film industry takes place in a Khanzhonkov documentary piece. During the Russian