THE LOST WORLD OF SOVIET ANIMATION

Chances are – you aren’t aware of Andrei Khrzhanovsky, Garri Bardin, Vladimir Tarasov or that There Lived Kozyavin, or the harsh truth they presented – unless you grew up in the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, whilst many Disney animations lost their relevance in my life other than their obvious nostalgic worth, a weird turn of events exposed me to the lost world of Soviet animation and their ever-relevant messages as I near my legal drinking age. My first encounter with a soviet animation (stop motion), was a Facebook video, with the work’s crux dealing with the concept of miscommunication and man’s tendency to enforce one’s own understanding over another. However, if I were to try explaining the video with just my words to compensate for my inability to have retrieved the lost work, I’d just be confirming the video’s message more. Instead, I’ll thank it for having made me aware of the existence of old soviet animation, which led me down the journey of salvaging a sizeable number, if not the most of them.

I’d like to start this article with the mention of Andrei Khrzhanovsky, who in my opinion, isn’t just the most visible rebel from the Soviet-era, but the most aesthetic, unlike the prominent Garri Bardin (who’s just as good, by the way, though Khrzhanovsky deserves the same applause, if not more). Khrzhanovsky had my attention with his work There Lived Kozyavin, which managed to be distributed despite its obvious anti-communist criticism of the bureaucratic structure of the soviet regime thanks to the state-run Soyuzmultfilm’s (animation studio much like Warner Bros, Ghibli, MAPPA or Disney) low censor radars for animated works. Andrei’s works display a strange modern-Kafkaesque narrative while using a weird mix of jazz (at least in this film) and a realist aesthetic with touches of old colorful Russian paintings, staying true to the intended artistic style. A much later work of his – The Glass Harmonica (1968), never managed to survive the state censors, becoming the first-ever animated short film to have been banned in USSR (you needn’t worry since you’ll find links to all these works later in the blog. I’m a critic AND an archivist, after all). However, it took four years for a more seasoned Khrzhanovsky to use the Russian symbolism of the butterfly (souls of lost dear ones trapped in purgatory) to make an apparently innocuous elegy on freedom through his much-acclaimed work – The Butterfly (1972), which isn’t just a psychedelic commentary on the same, but a fierce criticism on human nature with a hopeful end which suggests opening towards change and respectful acceptance of man towards the world around him. Though it is to be argued as to how apt this message is in today’s world, the hope, and the message directed at the young ones growing in the CCCP was certainly a really good one. I mean, if it managed to move a drunk nihilistic twenty-year-old, do you really think it wouldn’t affect an eight-year-old for the better? Also, if you do happen to like his old works, you’d probably like to hear what Father Frost sounds like in Masha and the Bear (yes, Khrzhanovsky voiced the guy in this much loved modern-day Russian animation which has won hearts of many children around the globe. In fact, you’d rather have five-year-olds watch this over Oggy and the Cockroaches).

Anyway… The Butterfly… butterflies… Vladimir Tarasov, and his work – The Contact – with a similar message, inputs from the western world – specifically the use of the iconic Godfather theme music which the central character from the short whistles about, a commentary on human nature and an obvious room for change with a very different ending from the former work however… Tarasov dealt with the world of Russian science-fiction animation and certainly made a place for himself there. His short, Contact (1978) tells the story of a researcher who goes about whistling a known tune caught from an acclaimed Hollywood film whilst capturing specimens for his study, uncaringly stealing their freedom until an alien – a creature way bigger than him comes before him, at which point, he feels like the prey and all music stops. A sharp reflection of a creature’s reactions based on their own intrinsic intentions and tendencies, the resolution to the character’s conundrum is only reached when despite the low angle shot with the alien’s cowboy boots smack in his face are mellowed by the flawed tune it’s trying to emulate that the researcher had been whistling around carelessly from the start - as the film ends with the Russian man teaching the alien the music he’d been whistling (a probable meta redemption from using the American tune in the Soviet work despite the Cold War era) as they walked into the distance without another care in the world (id est, the insects the guy had captured till then). Though Tarasov’s work – The Contact, never struck me as visually unique (despite its obvious Russian aesthetic touches, like one of the introductory frames with the foliage and striking flowers), his short – The Pass (1988) wins the cake, artistically speaking, making use of lines reminiscent of an old Art Spiegelman underground comic with characters drawn in the 70s manga format – and it certainly would be foolish to say that Soviet art existed in isolation. As a matter of fact, after the end of the soviet era in the early 90s, Tarasov moved to India in the latter half of the decade, becoming one of the founders of the film school Zee Institute of Creative Art, while also teaching there for four years. This was just many of the many other artistic and pedagogical interactions he had with many other organizations.

The use of different styles and mediums, should always be synonymous with Garri Bardin, who began his life with his service in the Soviet army, studied acting at the Moscow Art Theatre School, joined the N. V. Gogol Moscow Drama Theatre (which was where he assumed the name Bardin because his surname was just way too long for the theatre posters) – he also wrote screenplays around that time, till he managed to land a job at Soyuzmultfilm (you shouldn’t forget the name of this amazing studio if you really loved these works) as an animation director in 1975, though he spent most of his time as a voice actor there (at the start at least). As a matter of fact, though Garri has a somewhat cult following amongst cinephiles and old archivists for his predominantly adult stop motion animation narratives, I find his hand-drawn animations just as appealing and soothing to the soul – starting from his first-ever work in 1975: Reach The Sky – which tells the story of the boy Zhenya who saw a star fall to the earth from the sky, only to find it with the intention of returning it back where it belonged, despite the trouble it caused him (imagine this retelling from the view of Eddy from the American cartoon Ed, Edd n Eddy – yeah, it's not all that funny anymore... isn't it). A very important component of this animation lies in how the fallen star’s ethereal glow had almost no effect on the central characters of the animated short, showing them a moral direction towards their environment instead of showing it in ethical terms. However, Bardin is mostly remembered for his anti-war short (yes, that’s how people change over the years, and people should be given the time to…), Conflict (1983) – a stop motion animation made with matches, till all of them light up and burn out much like the world after a war. My personal favorite, nevertheless, would have to be Frills (1981) – which basically puts Robert Frost’s Mending Wall to shame by giving a stronger definition to man’s intrinsic need for creating boundaries, and the eventual obsession it ends up becoming. A stop motion made with barely anything but wire – it certainly strips down to the naked obsession of man. I think I’ve now reached a point where I can start of on the animation style without causing any abrupt disturbances to your attention… so… the essence of Soviet animation lay in stop-motion, in the fact that it was made essentially for delivering a message instead of catering to a particular audience, unlike most American cartoons of the time. As can be seen with Bardin’s stop motions, particularly, Frills – it clearly wasn’t something you would like your child to watch. But this wasn’t the first. The 1912 experimental stop motion film The Cameraman’s Revenge was essentially made for a mature audience and the use of dead beetles and grasshoppers weren’t the reason for it (the film dealt with marital problems and infidelity). As a matter of fact, only a handful of soviet animations are simple to the most extent – like Choma’s Adventures or The Flying Ship (yes, Bardin made the simple ones as well, probably to hold out his messages till the end of the USSR, after which he came out with works like an Orwellian retelling of The Ugly Duckling which received a lot of trouble with its distribution for the same reason, and Bolero (2017), though it didn’t keep him from getting the state censors from the 80s to approve many other works with just as strong a message). A large extent of these films deal with our perceptions of the world around us, crucial cognitive factors of certain situations, unlike the never-ending series of a coyote laying ineffective traps for a roadrunner in the canyons (I dare you to sue me, WB). Take Bardin’s Marriage for instance – a short ending with a child’s cry, reminding me of the haunting echo of a death cry from Ghatak’s Meghe Dhaka Tara, the invisible faces at the Banquet, or Adagio’s chilling retelling of the story of Christ (not exactly soviet, because it was released in 2001 – a time when the Russian Orthodox Church had the love of the masses over the ideology that housed them till the early 90s) and its sharp criticism of human nature and its tendency to shirk its accountability onto any scapegoat at hand.

The saddest fate of them all, however, would have to be that of Rozaliya Zelma – still remembered for her work Birthday Night (1980), and a few other works, most of which never managed to survive the test of time. Though my intensive research (which included going through a lot of Russian pages on the internet – suggesting a really wounded path even for me) tells me that her talents remained mainly in hand-drawn animation, all we now have is this profound stop motion which tells the story of young Tima who’s afraid of the night (because he’s a teeny weeny kid and has to sleep alone in the dark… truth be told, who didn't pee their pants as a kid over stupid nightmares? We all know that it wasn’t really Tima’s fault) till the elegant Ms. Night comes and invites him to her party along with her three other, usually forgotten, dear friends – characters that aren’t usually accounted for in our practical lives (who really cares for a bespectacled owl, a lazy dog, and an eavesdropping fox). Nevertheless, despite being the one work that touched the deepest recesses of my heart, Rozaliya Zelma is practically a ghost with nothing other than a non-descript IMDB page to her name, much like so many other professionals and their works in this amazing world where we wear stupid glasses and copy dance moves on Tiktok, Anyway, to each their poison.

I’m certain that by now I sound like a clearly biased person, but can you really blame a twenty-year-old who can watch Tom and Jerry reruns with a straight face, for breaking into tears after realizing that Tima from Birthday Night wasn’t actually afraid of the dark, but his loneliness?

Now it's time to give you all the links to these works, which I believe was the incentive that kept most, if not all of you, reading (also, this isn't going to be my only work on this as I hope to dig further and come out with more works, and stories related to this, so stay tuned)... anyway... (just click the names below and you'll be redirected to the films)

1. Andrei Khrzhanovsky

    There Lived Kozyavin

          The Glass Harmonica

    The Butterfly

2. Vladimir Tarasov

    Contact

    The Pass

3. Garri Bardin

    Reach The Sky

    Conflict

    Frills

    Marriage

    Banquet

    Adagio

    Choma's Adventures

    The Flying Ship

    Bolero

4. Rozaliya Zelma

    Birthday Night

The Cameraman's Revenge

Though I've made sure that most of the works here won't require one to know Russian as such, I think it will be needed to understand some shorts. While I have no resource to help one out with Choma's Adventures, I'm trying to work on this, with the subtitles for the films where they aren't there, or auto-translate won't work. In case you need help with that for some works, reach me and I might send a rough idea of what it is (as you reckon, I've barely begun this project... I need some more time to get things rolling, but might help in some ways). 

                                    Anirban Chakroborti