Animatsiya in English

In 1986, Aleksandr Tatarskiy, having already become a famous and award-winning director, wrote an article in the popular Soviet journal "Youth" (Юность) about animation. This great article was an inspiration to young artists at the time, and made more than one of them choose the path of animation. Two years ago, berezovaia posted scans of the original article with Tatarskiy's permission.

In July of last year, having become one of the most influential and beloved figures of the Russian animation community, Tatarskiy died, triggering many reactions from his colleagues. Back then, I wrote two entries summarizing his life (click on the first link to see some of his most famous films, which are discussed in the article). I also began work on translating that 1986 article into English, but my studies took precedence. Now, however, the translation is finally finished! It is a wonderful, lively article, and I think that there are many points raised in it that are just as valid today as they were 22 years ago (while in some cases, interestingly, the situation now is the opposite of what it was then). Tatarskiy's words have unique authority; he was not only a very successful director of both popular and auteur animation, but he also founded a successful studio, today perhaps Russia's biggest and certainly its most award-winning, and kept it alive despite the tough financial times of the 1990s and despite his refusal to be reduced to doing mindless commercial work.

Anyway, that was later. This article was written in a completely different time period, but it already shows the early vision that would lead him to co-found (with Igor Kovalyov) the Soviet Union's first independent animation studio just two years later.


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Making Animation

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Left: Igor Kovalyov, Right: Aleksandr Tatarskiy

Aleksandr Tatarskiy is a director and artist at the studio "Multtelefilm". His works have received top awards at international film festivals in Zagreb, Gabrovo and London, and at national film festivals.

( Instead of an Explanation )

( Instead of a Preface )

( Don't Get in Line )

( Lyrical Retreat )

( The Availability of Deficiency )

( Unlyrical Retreat )

( Land! )

( Lyrical Advance )

( 35 )
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Some of my own thoughts:

The "Lyrical Retreat" section especially is as relevant as ever, both in the West and in Russia. By contrast, Tatarskiy's plea for accelerating the tempo of films in "Lyrical Advance" sounds positively baffling today in an age where most cartoons have non-stop chatter and mindless action, reflecting the rising percentage of children with ADHD. What is more necessary today is a radical slowing down of the pace and teaching children to think and reflect. We need more films like "The Tree and the Cat", "Spring Melodies", and "The Lodgers of an Old House" (links go to videos).

This is the only surviving scene from The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman Balda. It would have been the first Soviet animated feature film; a film-opera with a score by Dmitriy Shostakovich, directed by Mikhail Tsekhanovskiy. Work was started in the early 1930s and everyone involved was very excited about the project. However, the film was killed by three blows: first, the denunciation of Shostakovich's music in the 1936 edition of the newspaper "Pravda", leading to a forcible termination of his contract to finish the score; second, the first screening of Disney's cartoons in Moscow in 1934, and the subsequent government consolidation of all animation studios into one big one (Soyuzmultfilm) and decree that animators must from now on only imitate Disney's style (whereas this film was the culmination of the independent development of Soviet animation in the 1920s and 1930s, and was certainly not in Disney's style. For more see my previous post about this period in history); and finally, the destruction of almost the entire (still unfinished) film in a fire during WW2.

All that's left is the "market scene":

Soviet animation: The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman Balda (+English subtitles) from Niffiwan on Vimeo.
(original video without subtitles can be downloaded here)


Above: The demon from a later part of the film that was destroyed.

There's also a CD which has 50 minutes of Shostakovich's score for the film. On the Amazon profile, you can listen to some of the other parts which would have been in the film. The music is very good.

Some things that stood out to me:
-The teeth. Wow, people didn't brush their teeth too much, did they?

-The rhymes (written by the poet Aleksandr Vvedenskiy). As the sellers shout out their wares, the religious items are made to rhyme with some pretty funny "mundane" things. For example, a woman shouting "kresty zolochonyye" (golden crosses) is followed by another seller yelling "yabloki mochonyye" (marinated apples). The most brazen example is when a man who's selling a picture of a fat Venus boasts that her chest is uncovered, and is immediately followed by a woman selling a picture of the holy archbishop boasting how curly his beard is.

-The soldier is portrayed much more respectfully than the baroness or the general.

I wish to thank the Youtube user loshchshch, who originally uploaded this video that I had been searching for for months, and who gave me a link to a higher-quality version when I sent him a message. He also recommended reading an article about this film that appeared in the 2002, № 57 issue of "Киноведческие записки" (unfortunately, that particular article is not available online).

There is another interesting story in connection with this film. In 2006, for the 100th anniversary of Shostakovich's birth, there was to be, for the first time, a public presentation of this opera. Not as a film, but as a ballet. However, once again this masterpiece was never shown; the performers were forced to cut out all the scenes featuring the priest, a central character in the story. Why? Because the newly-powerful Russian Orthodox Church objected to the portrayal of the priest and also insisted that Shostakovich "wrote the music to this tale not of his own will". Is this true? Judge for yourselves. Here is a quote from the liner notes to the above-mentioned CD by Deutsche Grammophon:

[Shostakovich] was immediately fascinated by Tsekhanovsky's concept: "The screenplay ... has succeeded in retaining satirical sharpness and the entire palette of Pushkin's ... work of genius tale ... The film is sustained at the level of a folk-farce. In it there is a mass of sharp, hyperbolic situations and grotesque characters ... The tale sparkles with fervour, lightness and cheerfulness. And to compose music for it was likewise an easy and cheerful task."

Tsekhanovsky's diary entry records vivid details of the collaboration: "Shostakovich played excerpts from Balda: the dialogue of Balda with the Devils. He played powerfully and precisely. It was as though his fingers were extracting precious stones from the instrument ... He likes my 'scenario', and he went about his work like an inspired, first-rate artist." Shostakovich was also satisfied with his music for Pushkin's tale. Never before or since did he come into such close and immediate proximity to the Russian folk-tale element, to folk intonations and rhythmics; and this encounter lent his work a special freshness, energy and splendour.

"The content of the tale itself and the artist's concept defined the character both of the musical language - in the manner of a folk-fairground and a merry-go-round - and of the entire film", the composer recalled. "Perhaps after The Tale of the Priest is shown on screen, I will again hear reproaches from certain musical critics at my superficiality and mischief, at the absence of the real human emotions that 'at long last' materialized in my Lady Macbeth. But what should we consider as human emotion? Do only lyricism, grief and tragedy count? Surely laughter also has a right to this honourable title?"

Thank you to alek_morse for bringing this to my attention.

"The Treasure Under the Mountain" is a feature film that was never finished or released, based on Tolkien's "The Hobbit". Only the prologue survives. This video dates from about 1994, and was made by the company which is now called Argus International (list of films). It was Roman Mitrofanov's first directorial work. alek-morse speculated that maybe work was stopped because artists in Russia were just finding out about how copyright laws limited what they could make.

Translation/subtitles were made by myself.

Full text of song from the video:

Goodness and laughter, laughter and joy
Smiles light up the faces of all
and souls, like windows, are thrown wide open.
The sky up above shines clear and blue.
No-one wants to believe that bad dreams may come true,
nor know that some day
that some day the weather will worsen.

But the tempest arrived, as is always the case.
Disaster moves in to take merriment's place,
With fire and armor and no shred of mercy.
The desperate bell rings too late to assist,
And how will a mere paper dragon resist
a brave paper dragon
against one that's real?

When all is stretched thin by eternity's freeze,
When all is enveloped by blankets of time,
The Earth bit by bit becomes merged with the sky,
And night bit by bit becomes merged with the day.
But somebody here's left a track in the snow
which leads to a faraway
which leads to a faraway hope.

The rhymes aren't perfect, but I came closer than I thought I would while still keeping the translation accurate.

A more recent (and very different) film by Argus International is "My Life" (2000), which won the Annecy award for funniest film. It is directed by Natalya Beryozovaya. Here it is on Youtube with English subtitles which were added by someone other than myself:

At Ekran Studio in the early-to-mid-1980s, Vladimir Samsonov (not the table-tennis player) made a series of little-known two-minute-long films using the paint-on-glass animation technique; little vignettes covering basic themes. More akin to poems than stories.

He was very prolific, making 11 (!) of these films in 1981 alone.

Russian animation historian Giorgiy Borodin has written (in this article, for those who can read Russian) that he considers these films to be very close in concept to the much later Japanese feature film Winter Days.

pavlovich74 has uploaded some onto his Youtube profile, which I will repost here. I think that most of them are really wonderful.

"Mood" (1982)


( Click for 6 more videos )

At the 2003 Laputa Animation Festival in Tokyo, 140 animation artists and film critics from around the world were asked to list what they thought were the 20 best animated films or animated series. These lists were then combined into one list with 150 titles on it. Many films from the finished list were shown at the festival that year, and after that it was made into a Japanese -language book about animation (like Jerry Beck's 50 Greatest Cartoons list, though this one had entries from three different continents rather than from just North America).

The 2003 Laputa list was widely reported on in the Russian press because places #1 and #2 were taken by Yuriy Norshteyn's films Hedgehog in the Fog and Tale of Tales. Russian reporters also mentioned with pride that 11 entries were from the Soyuzmultfilm studio, and only four from Disney's. However, none of those news releases mentioned what the full list was, and it was barely mentioned in the English press at all.

( More commentary and the full list )

Crossposted with the Animatsiya Community.

The first of a four-part documentary series about Russian animation which recently aired, translated into English by yours trully. This episode is a good, fun overview of Russian and early American animation history.



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Here are the notes; a list of the people and films mentioned (that I've been able to identify):
( CLICK HERE )

Direct Link to Video. (the original video without subtitles is uploaded on the ATV website over here)

A 25-minute interview in which a variety of subjects are talked about, and Norshteyn breaks the news that he is finally going to finish and release 30 minutes of his work-in-progress feature film, "The Overcoat" (in production since 1981).

There's a nice article about the history of "The Overcoat" on wikipedia over here (actually written almost entirely by myself). There are two small, soundless clips here and here.
There are also some short clips from someone's cell phone camera, taken in last year's museum exhibition of Norshteyn's body of work (20 minutes of The Overcoat, without sound, could be viewed by the public).

The English translation and subtitles are my work. I've also transcribed the interview, so you can read it in Russian and in English (it was impossible to fit both versions into this entry, but you can read the Russian transcription over here). My own notes are [written in square brackets].

( Read English translation )

(wiki entry)

Or rather, did on July 17. Oh well, better late than never. Congratulations!

Mikhail Tumelya, his friend and occassional helper, has some pictures over here, including a few of Petrov working on a film:
http://tumelya.livejournal.com/142932.html


Petrov's latest film My Love has been gathering quite a few awards all this while, including several in Russia, and also in Australia and Brazil.

It has also been subject to heated discussion (Russian link) at the animator.ru forums. Some intense criticism has also come from Chris Robinson, head of the Ottawa International Animation Festival, who suggests that Petrov may have boycotted his festival, and thanks him for saving them both a lot of trouble.

One of the main complaints from some quarters (including Robinson) has been Petrov's realism. This interesting AWN interview says that about 20% of the film was done with a kind of rotoscope. Mikhail Tumelya has a short post over here about that. Petrov often does base his characters on real actors. The following image was NOT done with a rotoscope, but was a series of images painted by Petrov of the actress's head to be used by his assistants on "My Love":

It is worth noting, of course, that Petrov's films also contain many fantasy segments (or unlikely situations) which would not be possible to do in live action. There are some things I find a little strange about the position of those who take issue with the realism of Petrov's films:
-would it be better if he filmed everything live-action except for the fantasy sequences? Would that not make the transition between them quite abrupt?
-is it (in their view) just generally innappropriate to combine "dreams" and realism in a film (or in an animated film)?
-is there such a fundamental distinction between animation and live-action filmmaking that the two function on completely different principles and should never overlap? (Brad Bird would disagree)

Personally, I think that this criticism simply comes from the fact that the Western artworld is in one of its periodic moves away from realism (which, if history is any judge, will last for the next several centuries at least, if not millenia).

The criticism coming from some of the "top tier" of Russian animators has been of an altogether different sort; some, including Yuriy Norshteyn and Ivan Maximov, believe that there is an overload of technical artistry and not enough subtlety/economy in the film (though the film still made Norshteyn's list of "top 5" at the last Open Russian Festival of Animated Film).

And at the same time, most people really love the film. Maximov himself says (in that animator.ru discussion) that he is more critical of Petrov's work than he is of his own, because he thinks that Petrov's work aims to reach something much higher than his own films do.

But let us now go back a bit. Here is an early film (1986) based on Dr. Seuss's tale in which Petrov was art director (this was during the long period when he was trying to find his style). The director is Alexei Karayev,


Here's Petrov's very first film as director, which was co-directed with Mikhail Tumelya when they were both students. It's called "Marathon", and it was widely shown when Roy Disney and some American animators visited the USSR in 1988. Apparently, it made quiet an impression on them.


Petrov's first solo film, and his "diploma" work, was "The Cow", which was produced at Pilot Studio. In the words of Yuriy Norshteyn (being interviewed on the show "Ночной полёт", 13-03-2007):
His first film "The Cow" was an immediate phenomenon. It was a diploma work and a full-fledged film at the same time, and incidentally was nominated for an Oscar. What's surprising is that it didn't win. Now that was one film which should have won, because it was in all respects a NEW film, of a new psychology.


Then came two films called "Dream of a Ridiculous Man" and "The Mermaid". They are also worth watching, but aren't available on Youtube or on any English-language DVDs.

The film which finally did win Petrov the Oscar in 2000 was made in Canada and called "The Old Man and the Sea". It was the first animated film to be released on IMAX.



Petrov has said that his next film will be made to celebrate the 1000-year anniversary of his home town, Yaroslavl. He hasn't settled on any one idea yet, but I guess we can look forward to something by 2010.

All the best!

Tatarskiy is almost unknown in the English-language world. For a glimpse at how much he meant to a certain country, here's an article translated from animator.ru.
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Aleksandr Mikhaylovich Tatarskiy was buried at Miusskoye Cemetery in Moscow.

The civil ceremony was held on July 26 at the Central House of Cinematography. The coffin was laid on the stage of the White Hall. Hundreds of people came to say their farewells to the director, teacher and founder of Pilot Studio. Among them were many of his students, from a variety of cities and countries. Pilot Studio was there almost in full: everyone who had ever worked there or learned their craft there from 1988 until today.

At the memorial service, speeches were given by Armen Medvedev, Yuriy Norshteyn, Eduard Nazarov, Andrey Svislotskiy, Vladimir Golovanov, Pavel Finn, Natalya Lukinykh, Aleksandr Petrov, Larisa Malyukova, Konstantin Bronzit, Vadim Zhuk, Garri Bardin, Vitaliy Manskiy, Boris Savin, Vladimir Shakhidzhanyan, Yevgeniy Sivokon, Igor Volchyok, Vladimir Nazarov, Mikhail Tumelya, Anatoliy Prokhorov and others.

They talked about the wisdom, talent, and unique love of life of Aleksandr Mikhailovich, and compared him to an unbelievably bright clown, like Yuriy Nikulin or Slav Polunin. "Of course, his films are part of history, a classic of world cinema", concluded Prokhorov, "but we must also acknowledge that Tatarskiy and Pilot Studio are a galaxy, a new generation of young directors. Nearly 60% of today's directors, animators and artists in Russian animation are Tatarskiy's pupils. In that sense, Tatarskiy represents an era."

In the lobby were hung photographs from various years, featuring Aleksandr Tatarskiy in childhood, with parents, friends, friends and colleagues, with prominent artists and masters of circus and film, at festivals in Tarusa, Suzdal and "KROK" and in Pilot Studio. A video with music by Grigoriy Gladkov from the film Last Year's Snow Was Falling was constantly playing (it was made by director Aleksey Budovskiy, from America).

The final rites at the cemetery were recited by Sergey Merinov, Grigoriy Gladkov, Eduard Uspenskiy and Anatoliy Solin.

When the funeral procession arrived at Miusskoye Cemetery, it started to rain. But once the final goodbyes were given, the sun came out and a rainbow appeared in the sky...


Aleksey Budovskiy's video.
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On a brighter note, Pilot Studio's website is fully online for the first time in years (before Tatarskiy's death, it just redirected to the "Mountain of Gems" project page).
http://www2.pilot-film.com/index.php?id=2

Also, someone has created some articles related to Tatarskiy and his work on the English wikipedia (link). I think I'll try to fix them up a little, since they do miss a lot of info.

One of the most notable people in the Russian animation community, Aleksandr Tatarskiy, died this Sunday in his sleep at the age of 56 of heart failure.

Tatarskiy was born on Dec. 11, 1950 in Kiev. In 1974, he graduated from the Kiev Government Institute of Theatre and Film named after Karpenko-Karago, majoring in all four of the fields at the institute: journalism, film criticism, editing and scriptwriting. He also graduated from the specialized courses for artist-animators at Goskino in 1975.

He started his career in animation in 1968 at the studio Kievnauchfilm (Kiev Science Film). Back then, Tatarskiy had little hope of getting a chance to direct his own film; traditionally, animators only got the chance at directing after they had grown old at the studio. However, he got his big break in 1978. A number of animated segments had to be made for the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow (one for each type of sport), but the people making them couldn't seem to make anything interesting. Tatarskiy learned of the problems while visiting Moscow and boasted that he could do it "using my left hand". His boast was put to the test, and he was left in Moscow to fix all of the segments. After he managed to do this, his grateful bosses at studio Ecran gave him the opportunity to direct any film of his choosing as a reward.

The result was a classic of Soviet animation, "The Plasticine Crow" (1981), with music by Gennadiy Gladkov and words by Eduard Uspenskiy (a famous children's writer):

This was a satirical version of a well-known folk tale, which traditionally goes something like this: a crow finds a piece of cheese, a wily fox comes along and praises the crow, the crow opens her mouth to show off her beautiful voice, and the cheese falls to the ground, whereupon the fox snatches it. This was also the first use of clay painting in Russia, a technique invented by American animator Joan Gratz just a year earlier. The film was initially banned for "ideological emptiness". It was saved by the directors of the tv program "Kinopanorama", Ksenia Marinina and Eldar Ryazanov. Despite the ban, they included "The Plasticine Crow" into the program along with a segment about how it was made. Since no-one was fired after this, the next day the cartoon was shown on all channels and became very famous.

His second work was a segment for the nightly show "Good Night, Children", which was watched, then and now, by millions of Russian kids right before bedtime (myself included). Over a quarter century after Tatarskiy created it, the segment is still used to open and close the show:


A number of famous and award-winning works followed, and Tatarskiy explored animation mediums other than plasticine. "The Koloboks Investigate", directed together with Igor Kovalyov, was released in 4 parts between 1986 and 1987:



In 1986, Tatarskiy became the first Soviet director to produce animation for a western client (for Ted Turner's TBS).

In 1988, Tatarskiy founded Pilot Studio, the first privately-owned Soviet animation studio. From the very beginning, Pilot held a place as one of the most important studios in Russia, a position which it holds to this day. Here's one of its early films (director Rinat Gazizov):


Ironically, given the circumstances of its creation, Pilot Studio in the 1990s picked up the torch which had been unceremoniously dropped (and nearly extinguished) by the former juggernaut of Russian animation, Soyuzmultfilm. Conditions at Soyuzmultfilm deteriorated rapidly throughout the 1990s, until finally it resembled a criminal extortion scheme more than it did an actual studio. Working conditions became impossible. To understand the significance of this, consider that all Russian animators (and animation directors) were taught their craft at the studios at which they worked. With the collapse of Soyuzmultfilm, there was no place for people to learn animation. Fortunately, Pilot Studio stepped up and began providing free courses, training the next generation (students were often instructed directly by Tatarskiy).

The break-up of the major studios also caused animators in Russia to become isolated from each other, and peer evaluation became very difficult. In response to this need, Tatarskiy founded the Open Russian Festival of Animated Film in 1996 and has been its president ever since. Since its inception, it has been the most important animation festival in Russia and has been key in keeping the Russian animation community connected (another great part has been played by LiveJournal; many Russian animators have LJ accounts). The Russian animation community remains about as closed-off as it was in the days of the Soviet Union, and throughout the years many great works have premiered and won top prizes at this festival which have not made their way outside of Russia's borders.

One of the most ambitious projects in contemporary Russian animation was begun by Pilot Studio in 2004, and is called Mountain of Gems (official website). The plan was to make 52 animated films of 13 minutes each, each one based on a folktale of a different ethnic group in Russia (Russia has over 100 ethnic groups within its territory). Part of the funds would come from the government as part of its program to reduce extremism in Russian society (which is a real problem). It is generally agreed in Russia that a great way to reduce extremism is to foster tolerance among children, and animation has historically played a great role in doing this. So far, 27 films have been made, but even before Tatarskiy's death funding was becoming more and more difficult to get. Each film starts with a short segment using Tatarskiy's signature clay painting technique describing the culture in question. You can see a collection of them over here (10mb).

A glimpse of the impact that Tatarskiy's studio and vision have had on Russian society can be seen here. That was last year. Pilot Studio was cleaning out its archives, and from what I heard, "all of Moscow" showed up at the dumpster behind their lot on a scavenger hunt for souvenirs of their youth. They had to be quick, though, because the garbage collection service came that very night (the first time it came, people refused to let it pass).

Tatarskiy managed to accomplish a great deal, yet he left many unfinished projects behind him. One of the biggest, and closest to his heart, was a feature film called "Train Arrival" which was one of the main reasons for founding Pilot Studio. Work on the scenario began in 1986, and the film slowly began to take shape over the years, while at the same time the country grew more and more unstable. Those who saw the unfinished work (including such eminent animators as Yuriy Norshteyn, Fyodor Khitruk and Eduard Nazarov) spoke very highly of it. Then Igor Kovalyov decided that he wanted to move to the West, and persuaded Tatarskiy to let him direct a film, telling him that once he would be in the West he would no longer get a chance to make auteur films. Work on "Train Arrival" (which had by then reached roughly 40 minutes) was stopped, and the films "Hen, His Wife" (1989) and "Andrey Svistoskiy" (1991) were made (you can see clips over here), and went on to win international awards. After that, Kovalyov left and began making auteur films in the West (in the words of Tatarskiy, "in one sense I suffered a huge loss, but it taught me experience as a producer"). And after that, the Soviet Union collapsed and there was no longer any money to finish "Train Arrival".

10 years later, when Pilot Studio was moving to a new location, some of the materials for the film were put into a warehouse... which quickly flooded. They were carefully taken to the new location and laid out to dry. After several days, the water pipe in the new building burst and they were once again drenched with water. To this day, the materials for the film (many of which are now moldy) are kept at the studio, and many of them have been scanned. But it is unlikely that they will now be used.

Traces of the film-that-never-was can be seen here and there, from the 1999 Russian film The Socks of the Big City to the Academy Award-nominated French feature film The Triplets of Belleville.

More recently, after years of planning, work had finally started on a feature film called "Mad Hair" (see concept art here). What will happen to that film now, and to Pilot Studio in general, is unknown. The following message has been put up on the Pilot Studio website:

Dear friends, colleagues, and those who love animation…

We have suffered a great loss.

Our leader has left this life.

The soul of our studio.

Our Aleksandr Mikhaylovich Tatarskiy.

There are no words yet. They will come later.

But works have been done. And are. And will be.

And a there is great sense of gratitude for everything.

For the fact that we are in this profession. For the fact that we have not grown up, or have not grown up fully. For the joyous feeling of freedom that was granted to us by our Chief.

It is difficult to say what you feel, when the atmosphere which you have breathed dissappears. Of course, we will continue to live and work, and to create in a way that we will not ashamed before our Teacher.

And still, there must be some time to accept this Loss and calmly think about what to do next.

Thank you to all who responded and mourn with us.


On July 12, 2007, Aleksandr Tatarskiy gave his last interview:
http://www.thenewtimes.ru/talkshows/87/?video=1

(addendum: Tatarskiy's name has been mentioned very little in the English-language media, so my sources come mostly from Russian-language interviews with Tatarskiy. If you need the source for anything that I said above, leave a comment)