Oct 09 2024
Meet the Brumberg Sisters, Valentina and Zinaida Brumberg, both Moscow-born artists who worked together as animators, screenwriters, and directors, creating around 50 films in total. Made in 1937, this is their spooky animation of Charles Perrault’s Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale. Perrault’s version was a cautionary message to children about stranger danger. 🔗 Related …
Oct 02 2024
In Birthnight, Night visits young Tima, a boy who sleeps with the light on because he is afraid of the dark, and she invites him to her nighttime birthday party in the woods. If the story doesn’t sound intriguing enough, the eccentric synth music of Eduard Artemyev is sure to transport you to another world, …
Sep 18 2024
Here’s a little treat for this Wednesday: a jam ad created for Russian Sugar directed by Yuri Norstein. It was one of a group of Russian Sugar commercials made by Norstein between 1994 and 1995 that used cutouts and drawings for the animations (a bit past the Soviet era but still delightful and created by …
Sep 04 2024
Full of the vibrant energy of the outdoors and whimsical romance, Tenderness (Нежность, Nezhnost) was director Elyer Ishmukhamedov’s first major film, made in 1966-1967, and set in summertime in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. At its release, the film won awards at the International Week Of Asian Film Festival in Frankfort and at the Locarno Film Festival. Tenderness was …
May 04 2024
Few movie robots have as much personality as R2-D2. He does not have a human face, speak a recognizable language, or even have arms in the conventional sense, yet a few whistles, beeps, nervous movements, and turns of his dome are enough to tell us exactly what he is thinking. Since his first appearance in …
May 01 2024
Walking the Streets of Moscow (Я шагаю по Москве, Ya shagayu po Moskve) is a lighthearted look at everyday city life in Moscow for youth in the ’60s. We see an opening scene in the airport, city sidewalks in the rain, taxi rides through the streets, evening traffic flows, and a concert in Gorky park. …
Mar 27 2024
A young couple wander through Moscow before dawn. The streets are almost empty, the city seems to belong entirely to them, and cranes fly high above as Boris and Veronika imagine a future that still appears wonderfully open. Within hours, Germany will invade the Soviet Union, Boris will volunteer for the army, and the private …
Mar 20 2024
I recently posted an introduction to the beautiful work of Aleksandr Petrov, who creates animations using pastel oil paintings on glass to create wonderful, unique frames of soft, muted colors. Here is one of his early works, The Cow (Корова, Korova), made in 1989. In the story, a boy remembers how his family lost their …
Mar 13 2024
A small gray wolf sits beside a fire. A baby drinks milk. Couples dance beneath trees while music drifts through the night. Men leave for war and do not return. Apples fall. Snow appears. A child skips rope with a bull. Images disappear and then return slightly altered, as though a memory has surfaced for …
Mar 06 2024
A horse moves through tall grass. Water plants sway beneath the surface of a pond. Rain falls outside an old country house while a father waits for his son. Only much later will that son leave Earth and travel to a space station orbiting a mysterious planet, yet Andrei Tarkovsky begins Solaris not with rockets, …
