Animatsiya in English

Four years after her poetic film about ancient family grief, director Galina Barinova moved into the science fiction genre with this strange, engaging, nearly wordless film.



The animation in Galina Barina's films is awe-inspiring. In this particular film, the methodical, smooth slowness of the movements, coupled with the innovative art direction remind me a bit of "The King and the Mockingbird", and even more so of Richard Williams' "Thief and the Cobbler". Even the majestic first appearance of the dragon brings to mind the first appearance of the War Machine. The beautiful art direction exudes a strange, timeless, enchanting atmosphere, with a bit of grittiness added by using a certain texture behind the colours. It fits perfectly with the scenario of the film, which may be set in the remote future or in the remote past.

The story is a cycle - like an ouroborous (the mythical dragon that eats its own tail). The film starts by introducing us to a worker who works at a strange factory that endlessly makes circles into squares and back again (a bit of foreshadowing, there). At the end of the day, he retires to his home and to his beloved lady. Unexpectedly, the media singles them out and makes them into celebrities, who must provide entertainment for the city's television-addicted inhabitants. The scene of the couple being pursued by giant video cameras on legs is one of the most memorable in the film for me.



But this seemingly charmed life has a terrible price. Because of her elevation to the position of "most beautiful woman in the city", the man's beloved is taken away for sacrifice to a terrible mechanical dragon that menaces the city. The theme of the sacrifice of the damsel to the dragon is ancient and recognizable in many countries. It is also present in a good amount of Russian folklore.

The grief-stricken man is donated resources by the city's citizens to go destroy the evil. And he goes... but in the end, he becomes what he is fighting, and the cycle begins anew. The people in control change, but the beast doesn't, for the people within the beast no longer perceive it as such. And this, too, is an ancient and fundamental idea. For example, to this day, we all know that governments take up the habits that they were fighting against once they gain power.

Also, it would be an injustice to not mention the wonderful synthesized music that so perfectly captures both the lyrical and the action-filled parts of the film.

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Galina Barina has made two masterpieces, from what I have seen. "When the Sand Will Rise..." is one, and this is the second. In her earlier films, she experimented with other techniques. Notably, many of her early films, until the mid-1980s, used cutout animation. But I have to say that her way of animating is far more suited to traditional animation. It took her a long while to find mastery with her voice, maybe because her voice is so distinct. Many of her other films either lack a solidly-presented screenplay (and the overall impression of them is rather average), or are just too strange to make sense of (as is the case with her wordless adaptation of a famous Tatar poem, "Şüräle" - though it gets better on repeat viewings).

Of her later early-1990s films, her 1991 adaptation of Ivan Bilibin's artworks, "Ivan Tsarevich and Grey Wolf", is not a bad film but feels stilted and constrained, almost like a history lesson. It feels stifled by the source material, rather than inspired. Her 1993 film about "Jester Balakirev" (her last work) feels even more awkward, despite the screenplay being written by two respected masters of writing and directing, Leonid Nosyrev and Anatoliy Petrov. Perhaps the problem with those two films is that they feature heavy use of dialogue, while Barina's best films feature almost none.

"Bobik Visits Barbos" (1977, directed by Vladimir Popov):


#5 and #6 from the "Nu, pogodi" series (1972, 1973, directed by Vladislav Kotyonochkin):




Two films from the famous Russian online animation series, Masyanya (2000s):

Continuing the theme of "Old Russia"...
"When the Sand Will Rise" is a film based on an ancient Russian ballad which opens a veil onto the world of old Slavic mythology and its heavenly gods. It is a traditional story of the struggle of good and evil, personified in images of the family and its destroyer, the werewolf. The art direction (by Galina Petrova) is based on Slavic folk art.

Directed by Galina Barinova in 1986 at Soyuzmultfilm, the screenplay was written by Anatoliy Petrov, a famous director himself. I first saw this film last week, and was amazed by it. I had never heard of Galina Barinova before, or seen any of her films. The animation is slow-moving, yet deliberate, smooth and hypnotic. Both the foreground and the background are stylistically united. The innovative style sometimes makes it seem not like traditional cel animation but like sand or paint.

The film might seem very weird to some, but it is in fact a faithful immersion into very old Russian cultural themes that are at least a thousand years old. I recommend keeping an open mind. The original ballad was first collected by Ivan Kireyevskiy, who lived in the first half of the 19th century.

Concerning subtitles: If subtitles appear to be missing: Click on the triangle at the bottom right of the video, and make sure that CC is turned on. Although I recommend watching this film with the subtitles turned off at least once, probably the second time - it is the kind of film that is best experienced without distractions from the animation.

A few people have commented saying that they like the translation, but I myself am a bit unsure about it. This is a ballad in archaic Russian that had to be translated into archaic English. Neither of these is really my specialty. I hope I did well enough.




Drink and food did the father give his son;
Yet one day did the father dislike his son;
And disliking him, turned him from his door:
"Go forth, my son, from my door abroad!
Go and learn, my son, of the foreign side,
Of the foreign side unfamiliar!"
How the brave youth's sisters were like him,
Three sisters, three of kin;
How the big sister did lead the horse out,
How the middle sister did bring the saddle out,
How the younger sister did give the whip;
And, on giving the whip, she did cry,
Through her tears, to her brother words she spake:
"Oh, but when, brother, will you return to us?"
"Oh my sisters, my dear kin!
You may go to the sea blue,
You may gather the sand yellow,
You may plant it in my father's field;
And when the sand will rise, and blossom,
That is when, sisters, I will return to you,
Yes, when the sand will rise, and blossom,
It is then, sisters, I will return to you."
How nine years for the brother passed;
On the tenth did his sisters go forth to seek:
Went the big sister to the sea, pike-transformed,
Went the middle sister to the field, falcon-donned,
Went the younger sister to the sky, star-enshaped.
How the big sister of her brother did not hear,
How the middle sister of her brother did hear,
How the younger sister her brother did see:
That felled does lie the brave youth
On the wild steppes of Saratov.
His good horse stands by his side,
Stomps his hoof he against the damp earth:
"Oh, stand up, wake up, brave youth!
All your sisters have gone to look for you!"
On not finding their brother, they all flew
Over steppes, over steppes of Saratov;
And they flew upon the brother dear to them:
"Oh, stand up, wake up, brave youth!"

Some interesting observations about this poem that I found at folk-lore.ru in an essay titled "The Maxim of the Impossible":

A variety of expanded metaphor inherited from mythological folklore is "the formula of the impossible" (described by A.A. Potebnya). The formula of the impossible is a poetic way to express the concept of "this will never be" or "this cannot happen." In the song "Food and Drink Did the Father Give His Son...", the priest casts out the young man, compelling him to visit "the foreign side". He is escorted by his three sisters. The youngest asks: "Oh, but when, brother, will you return to us?" Her brother knows that he will not return, that death awaits him, and thus replies: "Oh my sisters, my dear kin! You may go to the sea blue, You may gather the sand yellow, You may plant it in my father's field; And when the sand will rise, and blossom, That is when, sisters, I will return to you."

The question arises: why is our hero, not yet having left, already reporting his death? We are left with only one answer: the lyrical meaning of the song. For the song, its content is a way to express sorrow for the untimely-deceased young man, to show the grief of his sisters. The formula of the impossible is found in folk songs of various Slavic peoples.

The film goes further than the poem: the last scene, in which the father sees his whole family outlined before a gate, suggests that he has lost all of his children.

Here's another excellent film that is newly-translated into English.

"About Crayfish" was directed by Valentin Olshvang in A-Film Studio in 2003. It is his third film (second if we don't count the short segment for "Optimus Mundus"). Previously, Olshvang had worked as art director for Yuriy Norshteyn in 2000, on the "Goodnight Children" film. He is now once again working at Norshteyn's studio "Artel".

This film is based on old folklore, and was very difficult to translate (a lot of Old Russian). By necessity, much of the translation is a paraphrase, because this old dialect is too different from English to translate very closely. There are still some phrases that are not translated - if anyone can help with those, I would appreciate it. In particular: the mother's prayer at 1:46 and the gossiping women at 7:14. I wish to thank lana_sv for her mostly-accurate transcription of the Russian text. It helped enormously.

This film won 3rd place in the audience ranking at the 2004 Open Russian Festival of Animated Film in Suzdal, and received a jury prize for "creating a striking and original artistic world".

(note: not recommended for children)





Some of my own thoughts (do not read before watching the film):

The main character of this film may not even be the daughter, but the mother. Consider: although she is the main negative character in the film, she has clearly suffered greatly in the past. She is a widow, left to raise her daughter alone. Just when she thinks that she has succeeded in her life mission and arranged her daughter's marriage to a rich man, her daughter runs away without a trace. The villagers all shun her - she brings a sledge to the lake, but none of them will let their children play with her. When, after a long time, her daughter returns, the mother's anger at her own dole in life combines with her love for her daughter and desire to keep her by her side (because she has no one else). Her daughter sleeps, and quietly the mother walks out of the house with a sword. Her hatred, needing an outlet, focuses on the persona of the dragon whom her daughter married, who has actually been a fine husband this whole time:

He who covets to fool and torment my child,
and then to hide himself in the deepest hell,
in boiling resin and scorching heat,
His charms will not help him,
His tricks will not help him,
His artifices will not help him,
Let him sleep his final sleep,
Let his eyes burst.
May a scourge befall you,
May your bones rot in a pit,
Damnation upon your mother.

Only after killing him, and seeing her grandchildren cowering in fear, does she realize the true situation; a situation which for her was unthinkable. Trying to bring back her child, she loses her child and her grandchildren forever.

There are no winners in this tragic story.

I should also mention that the daughter's transformation is portrayed unbelievably well. The quiet sense of growing wrongness and unnaturalness, followed by the sudden bird-call... I get goosebumps watching it every time.

This Japanese-styled film (animator.ru profile) is the debut of Mariya Kuznetsova, made in 2007 at SHAR School-studio. Subtitles by me.

I don't know too much about either the director or the production of the film, but I like its music, story and about half of the art direction.

Kolobok is a traditional Russian fairy-tale that is very similar to "The Gingerbread Man" (it existed earlier, though). "Kolobok" means "dough ball".

This 2006 film by Vladlen Barbè (animator.ru profile) shows that even the simplest of fairy tales can have a core of something very serious behind them. As such, although there is nothing "age-restricted" about it, this film is really more for adults. It is a ballad about individualism, and the modern world.

"Kolobok" won 10 awards from various domestic and international film festivals, which are listed (in Russian) here.

It is very different from Barbè's very first (also brilliant) film, "The Box of Pencil Crayons" (I wrote about it earlier), which was made in 1985.

Translation/subtitles made by me.




Dina Radbel, in the Ukrainian "Rossiya" newspaper, wrote about its screening at the 2007 Open Russian Festival of Animated Film:

After the screening, people were shouting: "Thank you, Vlad!". That is the degree to which "Kolobok" moved them. In this backwards version of the tale, Kolobok does not run away from anyone. He runs away just once, from his parents. Nobody else gives a damn about him, one way or the other. The Wolf, Hare, and Fox are given their own complex fates by the director, in which there is no place for Kolobok. The only people who need him are the ones who made him.

Larisa Malyukova has a similar view of the plot:

Kolobok slammed the door of his parents' house. Now completely free, he yells out to the stars: "Here I am!" But the world isn't waiting for him with open arms. Nobody needs Kolobok, nobody even tries to eat him.

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The film has a somewhat complex production history. Vladimir Odinokov writes:
"Kolobok" was originally conceived as a 3D film, but Konstantin convinced Barbè to make it in an unusual form of cutout animation using MOHO (which allows one to deform the drawings, using skeletons)
There were four of us working on it...
But "Classica Studio" entered a dark period after they were expelled from the Central Studio for Documentary Film, and everything went quiet...
The studio was re-energized after around a year, and they offered us the chance to finish "Kolobok", but the four of us already had other stable jobs, and it was unrealistic to make the film in our spare time, and we didn't want to risk dropping everything to finish "Kolobok". So obviously, Barbè began making it in 3D...

Also, 3D became "hip", and 2D became old-fashioned...
What a sad joke...

Here is a frame from the version of the film which was being made with cutout animation:

I subtitled this film (animator.ru profile) a long time ago, but only uploaded it online in May of this year. This is an adaptation of a story written by Ivan Turgenev in 1854 that is very well-known in Russia. The film was directed in 1987 by Valentin Karavayev (best known for the films starring Kesha the Parrot), using the cut-out animation technique.

An English translation by Contance Garnett of the original story can be read here.




Some of my own thoughts:

There is a lot to like about the film, and though it is sad, it is often also very beautiful. My favourite thing of all may be the outstanding animation of the little dog, which really made me think of it as a living creature.

I think that the ending in this film wasn't quite there, personally; it left out a few important details from the story that I think are crucial to it (especially if one hasn't read the story beforehand). First - in the story, the old lady at the end wants Gerasim back & acts horrified by what has happened (paralleling the scene of the killing of the fly, at the beginning of this film - a very smart addition to the film that wasn't in the original). But in the film, we do not see her reaction. Second, I think that mentioning what happened to Gerasim after his return would have been important. Third, his psychological state isn't made very clear at the end in the film. Someone who sees the film before reading the story may naturally ask "why doesn't Gerasim go with his dog to his village instead of killing her?" In the story, he kills Mumu because he promised to the head steward after everyone surrounded his house, and he does not break promises. He had to promise to do it because if he did not, they were going to do it themselves - he's strong, but not strong enough to fight everyone off. And he couldn't just leave - he was a serf, bound to the place by law. In the written story, he only gets away because the old lady soon dies and her heirs have no time to worry about him.

I meant to make this post in June. Better late than never, I guess.

Here are some Soyuzmultfilm films from the 1940s that I subtitled. The first is "Elephant and Pug" (or "Elephant and Moska the Dog"), which was made in 1941. Directed by Lamis Bredis and Pantaleymon Sazonov, and based on Ivan Krylov's children's poem of the same name. It's about a little dog who tries to seem tough by fighting in a big fight which is completely safe for him.

If subtitles appear to be missing: Click on the triangle at the bottom right of the video, and make sure that CC is turned on.


Next, "The Stolen Sun", made in 1943 (if you believe animator.ru) or 1944 (if you believe the date in the film). Directed by Ivan Ivanov-Vano and Olga Khodatayeva. It was also based on a previously-written children's poem, this one by Chukovsky. The idea of the film is that the best things in life must be fought for.



"The Stolen Sun" was made in the middle of a horrible war, which was (speaking strictly empirically) around 100 times more deadly for the Soviet Union than for the United States. Many animators who had been working at Soyuzmultfilm were sent off to the front lines. The remainder (who were generally the better ones) were evacuated to the Ural Mountains, where they made just a few short animated films per year. However, even from 1939 to 1942, production was much less than in prior years. I guess the country was getting ready for something. Look at this:

1937 (the year of Soyuzmultfilm's founding): 24 films
1938: 28 films
1939: 10 films
1940: 8 films
1941: 10 films
1942: 5 films
1943: 4 films
1944: 7 films
1945: 4 films

After that, the number of films made per year slowly increased, but only got to its pre-1939 level after Stalin's death.

Despite the small number of films that were made, however, they were made extremely well. "The Stolen Sun" is really glorious, with skilled direction, very detailed animation on ones, and a superb orchestral score. The excellent animation of birds and butterflies in both of these films is definitely something to be studied. The future director of the Russian Winnie-the-Pooh films, Fyodor Khitruk, left the studio during the war to work as a translator (he had lived in Germany in the 1930s), and came back after to find that the expected animation quality had become much higher, and that his skills were no longer sufficient (source: his recent book).

Soyuzmultfilm also made propaganda films during the war. These were called "film-posters". I'd say that they constituted about half of its production at the time. Here are a few (links go to videos with subtitles):

Fascist Boots Shall Not Trample Our Motherland (1941)
Vultures (1941)
Cinema Circus (1942)
Journal of Political Satire No.2 (1942)

To compare: American animation studios also made obvious propaganda films at this time. Most notably, from 1941-1945, Disney was under government contract to produce 32 animated propaganda shorts (source), and Disney also funded some propaganda on his own initiative, such as the feature film Victory Through Air-Power.

Soviet animation never combined the genres of children's cartoon and propaganda cartoon, even during the war, which is something that American studios did do (some examples: Donald Duck living in Nazi Germany in "Der Fuhrer's Face", Popeye the Sailor in "You're a Sap, Mr. Jap", the Three Little Pigs in "Blitz Wolf"). The Soviet children's cartoons during that time very often had dark, timely themes, but there were no direct references to current events or crude anachronisms in fairy tales; these films can viewed independently of their historical context. On the other hand, children's cartoons in the Soviet Union were meant to serve a useful purpose by shaping children into good adults, not just to be fun. For more on this, see an earlier post in which I talked a little about it...

What does traditional Japanese poetry have in common with animation? Quite a lot, it turns out! Please read this, it's a fascinating thing...

Two years ago, I posted a translation of the first part of a wonderful interview that Yuriy Norshteyn gave to Tatyana Iensen for the sophisticated Kino-Art magazine in 2004. Now, I finally finished translating the second part (originally published in Russian, Kino-Art 2004, 4th issue).

Note: translation of verses are taken from various places; some from the internet, some my own translation of the Russian translations.

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What can you say about the condition in which your characters find themselves, in relation to life philosophy?

Both Basho and Chikusai are in that condition of having no fear of anything. One may say that they are in a state of total harmony. And so in the second half of this small film, there has to be an intersection of the beginning of terror and the humorous start. Not by accident does the wind rise and rip the kimono, and the hat fly above the trees with the leaves, in the finale of the film.

Sketch of Basho going against the wind

I was filming this little scene (Basho going against the wind) and thinking of King Lear. Why not film Lear in animation? The construction, clearness and fantastical conception of this story make it very suitable for animation. The construction is almost ballet-like; it is very natural for animation. Basically, the phenomenon of animation is based on how well you can find in a simple composition - not so much details and embellishments, but complex relationships which you will see as both the question and the answer to life, and maybe even as inculcation into as yet unknown territory. It seems to me, that in this sense "The Overcoat" is also very much a story-focused thing; clear and precise, like folklore that is molded into a parable-shaped state. The story of "King Lear" is parable-shaped, so you are freed of unneeded dramaturgical confusion (by the way, the Fool in this sense adds a lot to the composition). As soon as you begin to inquire into the details in Shakespeare, it all vanishes. I think that this is the precise reason for why when you are dealing with Japanese poetry, in which the action is clearly and unambiguously written in three lines, you are free; you do not need to rediscover the already disclosed action, but to find in it that which is hidden between the lines.
( Read more... )
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For myself, I find that Norshteyn's words help me understand not specifically animation, but the essence of art itself.

Also, I may get quite a verbal bruising for saying this, but does anyone else see the similarities between traditional Japanese poetry and LOLcats? I'm seeing a connection between the old and the new; people, after all, don't really change much. Both forms strive for economy of expression, both are extremely simple on the surface, both can be humorous, both are or were very popular with the general public, and both are similarly light-footed and rely heavily on the listener/viewer making connections that are not self-evident if one looks at merely the obvious.

This was done in a rush, so you'll have to excuse me if there are some awkward spots in the translation (note: "film fund" means something like "film archive" - I forgot the usual English term). Please ask me if anything here's unclear or if you're having trouble finding more information about something that is mentioned here.

Original interview in Russian.

My comments at the bottom.

The 73rd anniversary of Soyuzmultfilm's founding was 5 days ago.

If you're curious about Akop Kirakosyan's animation credentials, I recommend watching this film that he directed in 1992. There are some others that he made, but they're not so good.

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Press Conference: Akop Korakosyan, Director of "Soyuzmultfilm" (June 2, 2009)

What will happen to Soyuzmultfilm and its film funds?

The government of Russia has decided to privatize Soyuzmultfilm studio in the year 2009. Throughout the 70-year existence of this studio, many masterpieces of national animation were created, including "You just Wait!", "Winnie-the-Pooh", "Boy and Karlson", "Cheburashka and Gena the Crocodile" and "Hedgehog in the Fog". Many scandals have flamed up around the film funds of Soyuzmultfilm. What is the current situation regarding the defence of the studio's copyrights to its works? What will happen to the film funds after privatization? What does the future hold for Russian animation? The questions of the readers of Lenta.ru were answered by the director of Soyuzmultfilm, Akop Gurgenovuch Kirakosyan.


Akop Kirakosyan, image from radiorus.ru

( LONG INTERVIEW )

The most quotable thing in the interview is probably Kirakosyan's opinion about anime. The most noteworthy is probably the talk about creating an animation union.

Also, I must say that for all the complaining about the copyright deal made in the early 1990s, it has to be said that Oleg Vidov and his wife and their American company Films by Jove, despite their occasional mistakes (the English voice-overs and redone music were usually horrible) did a far better job of promoting Russian animation abroad than Soyuzmultfilm did since they got the rights back two years ago. In short, they actually did something and worked at promoting them, whereas the Soyuzmultfilm Film Fund seems to be doing absolutely nothing at all, other than authorizing horrible new Russian re-dubbings of the classic soundtracks to their best films (instead of restoring the originals). Films by Jove only owned the international copyrights, and a great deal of original film negatives. Copyrights within Russia for the films never belonged to them, and the market within Russia for them is far greater.