Russian Animation

Oftentimes, there is an unfortunate dichotomy, an almost absolute divide, in animation discussions between “American” and “Japanese” styles and modes of production, as if these are the only two countries on earth. As it happens, animation is an art form with more than a century of history, and from the very earliest times some of the world’s most creative, experimental and criminally underlooked animation has come out of Russia. From the earliest days, when Ladislas Starevich’s stop-motion animations with dead insects at once fascinated and unnerved audiences worldwide, Russian and Soviet animators have used their craft for visual and artistic experimentation rarely seen elsewhere, utilizing everything from puppetry to Disney-inspired cel animation to paintings on glass to create stories that are in turns comical, abstract, tragic and life-affirming. While Russian and Soviet animation has an enormously complex and varied history (much of which can be learned from the excellent documentary film Magia Russica, released by Yonathan & Masha Films in 2004) it remains almost completely unknown outside its country of origin, except by cartoon buffs such as your dear author. So rather than launch into a specific analysis of any one stream, movement, or aesthetic style, I wish only to recommend a few exemplary works produced in the Russian tradition, works of art that deserve appreciation, enjoyment, and yes, critical appraisement as much as any work in any place. The world of Russian animation encapsulates countless facets of ideology, history, memory and emotion, and if I can convince others to become part of a discussion about it, then all the better.

Cheburashka

The cute, precocious Cheburashka is perhaps the closest thing the USSR ever had to a Mickey Mouse (although Tove Jannson’s Moomins is probably a more accurate analogy), and his antics and adventures have delighted generations of Russian children. Alongside his closest friend Gena Crocodile and forever harangued by the mischievous Old Lady Shapoklyak, Cheburashka grew from a kid’s book written in 1966 by Eduard Upensky and starred in 4 stop-motions films produced in the 70s and 80s, all of which remain popular today. The Cheburashka films have a light, unhurried feel, as well as a great deal of philosophical and introspective discourse for ostensible kid’s films. Cheburashka remains popular, and has even gained international attention as the Russian Olympics mascot throughout the past decade. Meticulously crafted and lovingly written, Cheburashka is timeless and sincere in a way few films, animated or not, even attempt to be.

Nu, Pogodi!

If Cherabushka was the Soviet equivalent to Mickey Mouse, then Nu, Pogodi! was its Looney Tunes. Produced throughout the 70s, 80s and up to 2006, Nu, Pogodi! chronicled the misadventures of a wolf named Volk as he tried (and of course, failed) to catch a hare named Zayats in a variety of outlandish and hilarious situations. Like the best Looney Tunes cartoons, Nu, Pogodi!’s relies on almost no dialogue and prefers to use the dynamism and creativity of its own characters to convey a strange, fantastical world where animals stretch and squash, gravity doesn’t always apply, and nothing is ever fatal. And like those cartoons, it is the predator, the wolf, the coyote, the hunter, who ends up earning the lion’s share of our sympathies. Sure, he’s a crazed killer bent on getting his due, but he’s such a screw-up! He’s just tryin’ to get by! And more than 30 years since their first escapades, I still hope Volk catches that rabbit someday (or something equivalent, the guy really deserves to catch a break).

 

The Old Man and the Sea

The 1999 adaptation of Hemingway’s classic novel, besides being a beautiful and emotional film, is a must-see if only for one reason: its stunningly original medium of production. To create the films gorgeously detailed painting style of animation, director Aleksandr Petrov utilized more than 29,000 panes of glass painted with pastels, a technique few at the time had mastered and even fewer today. Sacrificing smaller design details in favor of smooth compositions, the film truly looks like a painting in motion, something at once unbelievable, magical, and unmistakably a labor of love.

Tale of Tales

Of all the Russian animators, Yuriy Norshteyn is the only one who can make a real claim towards international recognition. If you aren’t exasperated with my hackneyed analogies yet, you could even call him the Miyazaki of Russia: in 1984, the Los Angeles Olympics Art Festival declared by vote Tale of Tales, a short, abstract film about a little wolf looking for a home, to be the greatest animated film, of any country, ever made. Beginning with a woman whispering a poem to a child suckling at her breast, Tales tackles the big themes, showing war, jealousy, growing up, selfishness, folly and love through its transient and silent imagery. A bison and a little girl play jump rope, a poet searches for inspiration, a bitter couple argue in a snowy park, a wolf wanders about through the skeleton of an abandoned house. Memories come and go, things live, breathe and die, and by the end, you don’t feel as if you fully understand what happened, but you feel better for having seen it, more alive, more human. Nostalgic, delicate and beautiful as an unsullied snow, Tale of Tales is about, Norshteyn’s own words, “the simple concepts that give you the strength to live.” Tale of Tales is like a happy memory. You can see it, you can feel it, but trying to touch it, to make it real only blurs the image. It is a drop of the past, helping you remember to live in the present.

Hedgehog in the Fog

Although I’m personally more partial to Tales, it seems unfair to mention one of Norshteyn’s masterpieces without mentioning the other. Like Tales, Hedgehog in the Fog is deeply allegorical, telling the story of a little Hedgehog who goes to watch the stars with his dear friend the bear cub, only to find himself lost in the shadowy world of an immense fog. Following him is a sinister eagle-owl who represents the danger of the fog; silent and scary, the eagle-owl remains on the periphery of the hedgehog’s vision, an unspeakable fear that cannot be shaken off. And yet, the hedgehog remains curious; he willingly explores the fog, meeting a friendly dog, a beautiful white horse, and a whispering catfish before finding his bear cub friend and the warmth and comfort therein. The fog is impenetrable and treacherous, beautiful and imposing; nothing is certain about it. And yet, the hedgehog presses forward, knowing that even if he does not know where the fog ends and begins, somewhere is his friend, with a warm cup of tea, kind words, and a place to watch the stars. Rated the top animated film of all time in the 2003 Tokyo Animation Festival and praised by Hayao Miyazaki himself, Hedgehog in the Fog is, like Tales, deceptively simple; even with its heavy allusion and symbolism, it is the word of someone exploring the human condition, of the human seeking their place in a fog they cannot grasp, and finding it in the warmth and care of others. It is a gentle reminder to take of ourselves, and of one another, and of the world around us. Even in the fog, with danger nearby and the unknown all around, there is always some reason to push forward, something to discover, somebody to love.

6 thoughts on “Russian Animation

  1. I’m sorry I only have time to pick a nit right now, but my Russian major daughter would kill me if I didn’t say…

    Dude, it’s “Cheburashka” [??????????].

  2. Just to be clear, I didn’t type out a string of bracketed question marks. Inside those brackets was the character’s name in Cyrillic script.

    (But now that I think of it, I’m not sure which version comes across jerkier… Sorry.)

  3. Thanks for writing this. It always amazes me how the less than ideal circumstances in Russia for a long time produced so much great art and gave us the best animation time/place there has ever been. I don’t believe depressing environments create better art (plenty of communist regimes all over the world never let culture bloom) but there must have been a positive widespread attitude about art for all this to happen, even if they did get into serious trouble a lot.
    Most animation for the last few decades has been overly mechanical, as a means to conveying stories and jokes but largely ignoring the expressive effects animation can do. I honestly think the dominant way of creating horror and fantasy films should be animation.
    I used to see some incredible animation on tv in the 90s, there was a bible stories series called something like Testament and it had all sorts of unusual stuff going on.

    My biggest questions about Russian animation…
    – What happened to it? I know several animators just carried on producing but I get the impression it has mostly died off.
    – How much of the older animations have survived? I’ve heard that these people done this as a job, but most animators only have small handfuls of films listed on internet databases. Is there chunks of lost material?
    – The majority of Russian animation was taken off video sites by the copyright holders, I think there was a big one called Funtik. I’ve never heard that they had plans to release this stuff, so there is an attitude among enthusiasts that they are just being assholes who have basically taken away this stuff and given us no alternate way to see this stuff except illegal file sharing. The dvd series Masters Of Russian Animation are rare and expensive now.
    Yuriy Norshteyn is easy enough to find on dvd.

    I saw Nikolai Serebryakov’s Macbeth for BBC’s animated Shakespeare series in high school and it amazed me. It is easy to find on youtube and really worth watching. His Othello wasn’t as good. The dvd box set is worthwhile, all Russian animators with documentary “making of” included.
    Years ago you could also find his philosophical animation done in a surrealist/cubist style, it was wonderful, I’d like to see it again someday.
    Aside from the Shakespeare stuff, the only stuff easy to find is his old lady and lamb film, done with models instead of his usual hand animation.

    Ideya Garanina is also great. Poor Lisa is a gorgeous romantic tale like a misty sentimental Quay brothers. I posted a youtube link on a blog and was complaining about videos being taken down and it was taken down two weeks later. The Cat Who Walks is still on youtube, haven’t watched the full thing yet, it is feature length.
    http://mubi.com/cast_members/228164

    Keita Kurosaka is someone anyone who likes Russian animation needs to see. Nothing like normal Japanese animation.

    2 trailers for his film which taken him a decade to make. I really want to see it.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEYvXLgLz0Y
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX6U_ZWKQfc

    http://www.midori-ko.com/

    his music video for Dir En Grey, uncensored and not safe for work
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGo5MBAiwaE

  4. I don’t know the answer to all those questions, but a great deal of the decline from the Russian animation industry is the result of the USSR’s collapse. Studios like Soyutzmultfilm were directly funded by the State, and in the economic downturn and mass privatization that occurred in the founding of the Russian Federation, many animators lost their jobs and a great deal of their original works were lost. Much of the original film rights were sold off without the animators’ consent, and the situation became very difficult for the animation community at large. A number of projects are being worked on today, including the stop-motion film Gofmaniada and Norshteyn’s The Overcoat, but without stable funding, the production process remains difficult.

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