Fair article. Soviet (and soviet-adjacent) animation is bound to these contradictions that in a way defined its greatness by pushing the limits of the animators within a (somewhat) safe framework. Although Russian animators emigrating to other parts of the world is increasingly more common, their native country has gifted them a massive pool of references to develop their own style and an interest in the artform in the first place, whatever the conundrums said legacy was created under were.
A country that seemed to thrive somewhat after the dissolution of the USSR is Belarus. Some beautiful, quaint films were made there during the 90s, such as the work of Vladimir and Yelena Petkevich or Yuletide Stories by Irina Kodyukova, in my opinion the most aesthetically beautiful cutout film since Norstein's.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment, Carlos. We definitely weren't trying to retrospectively pick sides in the Cold War with this piece -- more just exploring what it really meant for communism to give way to capitalism in the post-Soviet countries. Many don't know what challenges animators faced in the USSR or especially afterward, and it seemed worthwhile to focus an article on that. It's a really messy situation.
And we appreciate the recommendations -- we'll have to check those out!
For sure, I think you were very neutral and balanced here. Another director who begs mentioning when discussing this topic is Garri Bardin, you wrote a piece on his claymation masterpiece The Grey Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood in the early days of the newsletter but it'd be interesting to see a follow-up on The Coiling Prankster.
For an example of depth and motion in the image using cutout animation, I also want to single out "Happy Birthday" (1996), unfortunately that director's only film. I couldn't forget it for years.
But the Petkevich films became more conventional over time, in fact I read a more recent interview with Vladimir in which he rakes his earlier 1980s and 1990s films over the coals and tells the interviewer (paraphrasing) that they had no worth other than preening in front of festival-going aesthetes. Yet those are the very films I love best. A rare example of an artist going the other way (I guess it kind of happened to Richard Williams too, but still, he was never as hard on his earlier, more "arty" cartoons as Petkevich).
Bardin is one of the very few great figures of Soviet animation (rebel or not) who adapted relatively successfully to the market economy, and even figured out how to successfully crowd fund (which has defined the last stage of his career). Even Tatarskiy, with his Pilot Studio's "Mountain of Gems" project, was reduced to basically completely relying on the government by the mid 2000s.
Thanks for the links to the Petkevich films! They're really interesting -- and they feel a bit Norstein-inspired, while taking some of those ideas and aesthetics in their own direction. It's hard to imagine dismissing pieces like There Lived a Tree as "preening"! We've never written about animation from Belarus before and will keep this in mind.
"I long ago forever gave up on arthouse films. Sorry, but arthouse is made for fools and critics. I have no desire to do it. When I make films for children, these family films, it is a chance to help someone."
A sad paradoxical situation has arisen: having reoriented himself toward the mass audience, Vladimir Petkevich has failed to attract that very audience. The works of the Belarusian animator can be viewed at festivals and on the internet. Here is what the director says in an interview: "It is not commercially viable for cinemas to show our cartoons, and television is not interested in them either. We show them at festivals, win awards, but what's the point? The cartoons gather dust on the shelves and, in essence, become useless to anyone. At the same time, attempts to post the works on the internet are categorically suppressed. But I'm not against it at all, let the kids watch them somewhere... But in the end, it turns out that we are doing all this huge work just for the sake of ticking boxes.
---
It's been a while since he said that - perhaps things are different now. But I have noticed that Belarusfilm seems kind of hesitant to have their films online - they'll be up for a while, then all suddenly disappear from the channel, then come back.
As for "There Lived a Tree", it does remind me somewhat of Norstein's "Tale of Tales", but it reminds me even more of Aleksey Karayev's excellent "The Lodgers of an Old House" (1988)
It will be interesting if you decide to write about Belarussian animation, though I imagine kind of difficult as not that much has been written about it. It never had widely-known hits like Ukrainian animation did, and was always far smaller, releasing usually no more than a few short films per year. Besides the Petkeviches, Igor Volchek and Mihail Tumelya have gotten critical acclaim (the names that come to mind for me). Yelena Turova may be their most mainstream director, at least stylistically - I liked her early films but have not seen her 2021 and 2024 animated features. Note that animator.ru forgot to enter the studio for many films between 2002-2018, so you can only see them on the director's filmographies. Like the country itself, Belarussian animation is a bit of an interesting parallel universe - what if the USSR had never collapsed but only slightly reformed, and animation had kept being state-supported this whole time?
We've got huge respect for Bardin's work. Thanks for the suggestion -- we'll add him to the list, and maybe also find a way of doing an updated piece on Grey Wolf that goes deeper into its creation than we could back then.
Fair article. Soviet (and soviet-adjacent) animation is bound to these contradictions that in a way defined its greatness by pushing the limits of the animators within a (somewhat) safe framework. Although Russian animators emigrating to other parts of the world is increasingly more common, their native country has gifted them a massive pool of references to develop their own style and an interest in the artform in the first place, whatever the conundrums said legacy was created under were.
A country that seemed to thrive somewhat after the dissolution of the USSR is Belarus. Some beautiful, quaint films were made there during the 90s, such as the work of Vladimir and Yelena Petkevich or Yuletide Stories by Irina Kodyukova, in my opinion the most aesthetically beautiful cutout film since Norstein's.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment, Carlos. We definitely weren't trying to retrospectively pick sides in the Cold War with this piece -- more just exploring what it really meant for communism to give way to capitalism in the post-Soviet countries. Many don't know what challenges animators faced in the USSR or especially afterward, and it seemed worthwhile to focus an article on that. It's a really messy situation.
And we appreciate the recommendations -- we'll have to check those out!
For sure, I think you were very neutral and balanced here. Another director who begs mentioning when discussing this topic is Garri Bardin, you wrote a piece on his claymation masterpiece The Grey Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood in the early days of the newsletter but it'd be interesting to see a follow-up on The Coiling Prankster.
The Petkevich films are also some of my favourites, particularly "There Lived a Tree" (1996)
https://animatsiya.net/film.php?filmid=144
and "Forest Tales" (1997)
https://animatsiya.net/film.php?filmid=50
For an example of depth and motion in the image using cutout animation, I also want to single out "Happy Birthday" (1996), unfortunately that director's only film. I couldn't forget it for years.
https://animatsiya.net/film.php?filmid=1641
But the Petkevich films became more conventional over time, in fact I read a more recent interview with Vladimir in which he rakes his earlier 1980s and 1990s films over the coals and tells the interviewer (paraphrasing) that they had no worth other than preening in front of festival-going aesthetes. Yet those are the very films I love best. A rare example of an artist going the other way (I guess it kind of happened to Richard Williams too, but still, he was never as hard on his earlier, more "arty" cartoons as Petkevich).
Bardin is one of the very few great figures of Soviet animation (rebel or not) who adapted relatively successfully to the market economy, and even figured out how to successfully crowd fund (which has defined the last stage of his career). Even Tatarskiy, with his Pilot Studio's "Mountain of Gems" project, was reduced to basically completely relying on the government by the mid 2000s.
Thanks for the links to the Petkevich films! They're really interesting -- and they feel a bit Norstein-inspired, while taking some of those ideas and aesthetics in their own direction. It's hard to imagine dismissing pieces like There Lived a Tree as "preening"! We've never written about animation from Belarus before and will keep this in mind.
The interview I'm thinking of is here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200918130641/https://www.kimpress.by/index.phtml?DomainName=mast&id=801&page=2
The precise quote:
"I long ago forever gave up on arthouse films. Sorry, but arthouse is made for fools and critics. I have no desire to do it. When I make films for children, these family films, it is a chance to help someone."
There's a good article about him here:
https://altereos.livejournal.com/257124.html
I like this quote from it (translated):
---
A sad paradoxical situation has arisen: having reoriented himself toward the mass audience, Vladimir Petkevich has failed to attract that very audience. The works of the Belarusian animator can be viewed at festivals and on the internet. Here is what the director says in an interview: "It is not commercially viable for cinemas to show our cartoons, and television is not interested in them either. We show them at festivals, win awards, but what's the point? The cartoons gather dust on the shelves and, in essence, become useless to anyone. At the same time, attempts to post the works on the internet are categorically suppressed. But I'm not against it at all, let the kids watch them somewhere... But in the end, it turns out that we are doing all this huge work just for the sake of ticking boxes.
---
It's been a while since he said that - perhaps things are different now. But I have noticed that Belarusfilm seems kind of hesitant to have their films online - they'll be up for a while, then all suddenly disappear from the channel, then come back.
As for "There Lived a Tree", it does remind me somewhat of Norstein's "Tale of Tales", but it reminds me even more of Aleksey Karayev's excellent "The Lodgers of an Old House" (1988)
https://animatsiya.net/film.php?filmid=143
(though without the grief)
and also partly Ivan Aksenchuk's "There Lived an Old Man and an Old Woman" (also 1988)
https://animatsiya.net/film.php?filmid=1657
(more conventional yet covering a similar theme)
It will be interesting if you decide to write about Belarussian animation, though I imagine kind of difficult as not that much has been written about it. It never had widely-known hits like Ukrainian animation did, and was always far smaller, releasing usually no more than a few short films per year. Besides the Petkeviches, Igor Volchek and Mihail Tumelya have gotten critical acclaim (the names that come to mind for me). Yelena Turova may be their most mainstream director, at least stylistically - I liked her early films but have not seen her 2021 and 2024 animated features. Note that animator.ru forgot to enter the studio for many films between 2002-2018, so you can only see them on the director's filmographies. Like the country itself, Belarussian animation is a bit of an interesting parallel universe - what if the USSR had never collapsed but only slightly reformed, and animation had kept being state-supported this whole time?
This extra information is a big help! Much appreciated.
We've got huge respect for Bardin's work. Thanks for the suggestion -- we'll add him to the list, and maybe also find a way of doing an updated piece on Grey Wolf that goes deeper into its creation than we could back then.
Looking forward to it!