KinoKultura: Issue 86 (2024) |
Traditionally, animation directors in Russia are less in the spotlight when it comes to reacting to current events and supporting the state. Creativity remains their shelter, but the subject-matter of internal emigration (into childhood, fairy tales, the past) is no longer sufficient. In a new way, and with greater expressivity, animators respond to themes of separation, loss of roots, and failed communication between generations.
The competition at Vyborg’s Window on Europe festival included a great number of works with a universal film language for very young viewers. A simple plot is realized thanks to well selected musical elements in the films Why the Water in the Sea is Salty (Otchego voda v more solenaia) by Natal’ia Naumova and Lilac Hour (Sirenevyi chas) by Iuliia Lis. Evgeniia Koviazina’s The Boy from the Melt Gap (Mal’chik iz talogo shchel’ia) turns to the fantastic tradition, while Alina Trubacheva’s Dyadektor and Maria Reznichenko’s Treasure (Sokrovishche) are inspired by urban children’s folklore. The motif of banned protest is accurately traced in the works of several young authors. Animated films also address the problem of a dialogue between generations, for example in Out of Harm’s Way (Ot grekha podal’she) by Ekaterina Parshina, who deals with the love of a teenager to the alien Another. The filmmaker has re-conceived Christian symbolism in the images of the astronauts. The Ocean's Heart (Serdtse okeana) by Natal’ia Kharina and Alena Rubenstein is about loneliness in a technogenic, mechanized world of fish, but it also offers hope in the shape of a shining berry. However, these works are prone to monotony, where the subject component dissolves and the hero disappears. This is different in an impudent, striking film filled with references to the avant-garde in the spirit of Norman McLaren: Elina Sibgatulina, Ekaterina Sterkhova and Polina Andreeva’s Rock&Frogs. A student tries to rise against rudeness, but the “internal frog” deprives him of the opportunity to express himself, yet the synthesis of music and color allows the authors to state their disagreement with the gloomy conformist crowd.
The film Green (Zelenoe) by Katia Miloslavskaia about the wanderings of a child’s soul is resolved in a quiet manner, referring us to the motifs of mandala, but it is flawed by a lack of plot. The alphabet of animation is, unfortunately, limited: in several works, the monstruous is connected to variations of the image of the alien in Ridley Scott or the Demogorgon from the popular series Netflix series Stranger Things, which has shown effective work with nostalgia. The aesthetics of Ivan Maksimov’s films are still popular with young animators, but often they turn to this corpus of films for the sake of reference, without creative energy, thinking solely about the requirements of the festival circuit. At least, such thoughts arise when watching the film Pups Station: Exit to the Right Side (Pupsiantsiia: vykhod na nuzhnuiu storonu) by Natal’ia Danilevskaia. However, this film about children’s nightmares is worth noting for its universal plotline. A similar historical reference is used in Anastasia Panteleeva’s The Letter (Pis’mo), Tat’iana Petrova’s The Dark Forest (Temnyi les), Diana Gordeeva’s P[r]osveshchenie [Enlightenment] and Kseniia Vasil’eva’s Grandma’s Wedding Dress (Svadebnoe plat’e babushki). They all strive to scoop power sources internally and courageously battle ghosts of the past.
The touching hand-made animation Come Back to my Shelf (Vernis’ ko mne na polku) by Marina Zinkevich is devoted to the theme of eternal sentimental images and works with the metaphor of secret shelves in the heart. When the Snow will Fall (Kogda vypadaet sneg) by Ekaterina Asireeva and I was Nine Years Old Yesterday (Vchera mne bylo deviat’ let) by Timofei Skisov address concrete periods of history into which the childhood of the lyrical hero is engraved. The poetry of memoirs is closely woven in with the ruthless world of adult reality. The warm world of these films is built from soft felt, tulle, cotton wool, mouliné thread, and various sound textures. For example, in I was Nine Years Old Yesterday the synthetic whimsical nature of memoirs is important, therefore the monologue here is a narrative assemblage, and voices from Soviet radio organically alternate with the speech of the current president. The sound creates a viscous atmosphere of hopelessness; however, the film exudes optimism thanks to the family images of childhood: the grandfather, the cat.
Animators pay special attention to the theme of internal emigration, which in principle has always been close to Russian animation, and today seems particularly topical and finds various ways of realization: flight into childhood, children’s literature, folklore, a terrifying tale, one’s own memoirs, or a mandala space. Before the viewer stand not only fairy tales, but also stories of initiation, exploiting the Freudian concept of the uncanny. It is curious to observe the works of authors prepared to work with voluminous objects and unusual textures, turning to difficult literary images. Thus, in the turn to heritage classics they use not only axiomatic texts and responses and echoes to anniversary events, but they appear courageous and determined in their turn to little-known texts. In the gloomy rape story in The Abyss (Bezdna) by Leonid Andreev executed by Dmitrii Nekrasov, the central images are not quite successful, but the fragile border of the human in people of different generations and the infectious nature of cruelty are impressive. In A Gentle Creature (Krotkaia), based on Fedor Dostoevskii, the animator Anna Smirnova—without conflicting with Polish animator Piotr Dumala, who adapted the story in 1985 under the title The Gentle Spirit—tries to turn the story into a sad color series and reflect in shades of blue and through images of water (accidentally intruding into the family interior) how a man’s repressive personality arises and grows in a modern Russian family. In the center of the author’s attention is the beginning of the story of the painful life and death of a young woman. The unexpected approach to literary classics reveals an interesting reservoir for future effective work.
If these two animated films are just sketches, Igor Voloshin’s animation debut Sleepy (Khochetsia spat’) draws from Anton Chekhov’s early prose and creates a frightening image of total catalepsy. In monochrome tones, with the accurate addition of a chilling yet magic blue, the film creates a rather frightening world of lethargy, adding in earthy colors the motif of a crowd that lapses into hibernation, where everyone is capable of crime. The personal crime story about how a 13-year-old girl suffocated a baby is already more than the Chekhovian story of a child who does not get enough sleep, but rather represents a clinical record of society: the village where the story unfolds seems struck by a sleep pandemic; unable to resist this virus is the courageous protagonist, the orphan Varya. Voloshin offers a ruthless diagnosis of modern Russian society. The jury of the animation competition of Window on Europe festival awarded the film a special prize “for the convincing image of general catalepsy.”
This year, there were also sad conveyor-belt works and copy-papers from the films of animation masters. This concerned especially the figure of Alexander Pushkin, whose 225 anniversary is marked by the Ministry of Culture. The job has been done, but Matvei Lashko’s attempt to tell the fairy tale Ruslan and Liudmila is quite helpless, as he tried to weave into the plot the rhythms of mandala and old Russian ornaments. Trying to saturate the action with gags, the authors nullified the poetic (and any other) text. But the main miscalculation lies in the dramaturgy and the image solutions in absence of the key thing: the devotion and love of the poem’s protagonists. Anastasia Zhakulina’s Exile (Ssylka) is at first sight a fresh, shining and laconic fantasy about the meeting of the poet and artist Rezo Gabriadze, but the film retraces Autumm has Come (Nastupila osen’, 1999) by Ekaterina Sokolova, based on Andrei Bitov and Rezo Gabriadze’s book Hardworking Pushkin (Trudoliubivyi Pushkin) and Gabriadze’s drawings.
Animation offers a possibility for revelation, and it is pleasant to see authors who are not distracted by formal searches but who reach for a confessionary intonation. Young animators tend to have problems with the level of general viewing, previously provided by foreign festivals and Internet platforms. Today, it is increasingly noticeable that they are cut off from the global film process. A general weak spot is the acting: extremely rarely do animated characters differ in plastic expressiveness and even less often, they have a unique speech profile.
The dialogue between generations not always gives rise to original plots, but today it is especially topical and finds unexpected and interesting forms. Aleksei Ignatov’s brilliant work Don’t Turn on the Light (Ne vkliuchaite svet; special mention of the jury “for an unmistakable understanding of the synoptic language of childhood”), is built on monologues of children which are rendered in the form of a poetic text stylized in the manner of 1920’s modernism. The film lifts not only the veil from the image of the Soviet past, but it leads to universal experiences and everyday life in the clothes of children’s tales.
Polina Volkova turns to the language of the avantgarde poster and vaudeville of the NEP period in the stylish and laconic screen version of Mikhail Zoshchenko’s story Searching for the Loved (Poisiki vozliublennukh). The filmmaker managed to connect organically the aesthetics of silent cinema and the colors of suprematism, the slogans of ROSTA and a melodramatic plot, humor and edification.
Emigration generates plots, not only about internal escape, but shrill stories about the dialogue of generations endured by authors in the present. But this is not only what is remarkable in Maria Savenkova’s Teenage Rain (Dozhd’-podrostok; special mention of the jury “for a light touch on the subject of loneliness, for the ability to let go and pause on feelings” ): the rhythmical everyday rituals, the sounds of the TV and the noise of the street build infinite barriers and draw a rather painful separation of close people—the Daughter and the Father—and build a sense of illusoriness of the present.
Aleksandr Khramtsov has been singled out for the first prize in the competition for The Brook that Ran Back to the Mountain (Ruchei, begushchii v gori), a film which carefully and with humor renders a story about eternal returns to the source. The filmmaker presents the theme of fidelity through the image of a dog mountain: its love is boundless, it devours while rescuing, it accompanies in city scenes, it protects, and even settles to work as yard keeper; in a word—it silently serves the heroine, and as a reward, it returns home with her. The subject of the daughter’s debt, the independence and hardly noted plot-line, which refers to the prose of Fazil Iskander, and the subject of the eternal opposition of urban and rural cultures remind us that Russian animation is an art about the eternal, an art of prompt and exact brushstrokes, pulsating emotions, and verbally inexpressible feelings.
In the moving fiction feature Era by Veniamin Ilyasov, shown at the festival program “Vyborg Account,” a young man (the eponymous heroine’s son) who is bound to a wheel chair watches mainly Soviet animated cartoons. Let us hope that nobody will strip us of this opportunity; otherwise, the children of the new era will have no shelter in the art of animation.
Nina Sputnitskaya was a jury member of the animation program of Window to Europe festival.
Awards
Main Prize: The Brook that Ran Back to the Mountain, directed by Aleksandr Khramtsov
Special Jury Prize “for a convincing image of general catalepsy”: Sleepy, directed by Igor Voloshin
Special mention of the jury “for a light touch on the topic of loneliness, for the ability to let go and pause on feelings”: Teenage Rain, directed by Maria Savenkova
Special mention of the jury “for an unmistakable understanding of the synoptic language of childhood”: Don’t Turn on the Light, directed by Aleksei Ignatov
NIna Sputnitskaya © 2024
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