Identity area
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Person
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Leyda, Jay, 1910-1988.
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Description area
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Jay Leyda was a critic, filmmaker, author, editor, and educator. Leyda was born February 12, 1910 in Detroit and studied filmmaking at State Film Institute, Moscow, with Sergei Eisenstein in 1933, and he translated Eisenstein's theoretical works on cinema. He wrote and edited critical studies and biographies of Melville, Dickenson, Mussorgsky, and Rachmaninoff. Leyda was a lifelong film historian and teacher of cinema, and during 1940s he was technical advisor on Russian subjects for Hollywood. In the 1960s and 1970s, Leyda taught at Yale and York University, Toronto, before going to New York University from 1973 until his death on February 15, 1988 of heart failure.