3D sausage

The 15th Open Russian Animation Film Festival in Suzdal is changing its format at the crossing

Grishkovets accurately noticed (when he still knew how to notice everything so accurately): you fly from the yard to your mother’s call from the window: “Cartoons!”, you sit down, happy, in front of the TV with bated breath, - and terrible, to tears, disappointment - puppet .... ..

Grishkovets accurately noticed (when he was still able to notice everything so accurately): you fly from the yard to your mother’s call from the window: “Cartoons!”, you sit down, happy, in front of the TV with bated breath, - and terrible, to tears, disappointment - puppet ...

Why didn't we like puppet films as children? I remember myself: I lacked movement and magic in them. It seemed that I myself could do this with my bears and dogs. Then came the miracle of "Mittens" and "Cheburashka" by Roman Kachanov, "Green Crocodile" by Vadim Kurchevsky and other puppet miracles. Miracles animated by such vivid magic that the Soyuzmultfilm puppet association (SMF) was attacked by Orthodox Cossacks with sabers and local Orthodox grandmothers under the banner of exorcism in the face of satanic dolls, animated by the blood of Christian babies.

Generally speaking, they did not appear from anywhere, but were always, as long as the SMF existed with its puppet farm, to the common misfortune, in the church, from where the puppeteers were successfully kicked out. And they fell on the heads of colleagues from Kalyaevskaya, where, by that time, for 59 years, drawn films, so beloved by Grishkovets and me, had been born in agony.

Soyuzmultfilm itself (the only specialized film factory in the country) also overpowered itself in the church - a terrible, black one, on the roof of which birch trees had long been growing instead of domes. The craftsmen sat like cockroaches behind the cabinets and breathed down each other's necks in line to use the pavilion...

Under these conditions, world-famous masterpieces from The Golden Antelope to The Tale of Tales were filmed. One SMF (including dolls) brought Goskino exactly half of the foreign exchange income of the entire cinema of the country.

And then Soyuzmultfilm actually disappeared. This is a long story, and now it’s not about that, as Nikita Mikhalkov would answer the question of where, in the light of recent events, to get money for animation.

For 15 years, about a dozen or three studios have appeared in Russia. A new age of Russian animation has begun, with its main help and curse - the computer. At the same time, in Tarusa, the first All-Russian Animation Festival started.

At the opening of the 15th festival, the chronicler of Tarusa-Suzdal, as faithful as Molière's Register, film critic Natalia Lukinykh showed the chronicle "Fifteen Moments". One minute, one year. A stranger, most likely, would not understand anything in this one and a half part, and, of course, would not feel it. But we, the animals of the Tarusa winter hut and the Suzdal March, chained by one chain and animated by love for the best of parties, remembering frame by frame each of the cited films and each of the crazy five-day periods, counting the days of departure and arrival ... Oh, how we watched this historical evidence ! The glasses of the veterans of the first Tarus were wet with tears when Sasha Tatarsky flew from the sled into the snow, and the cinema of those years suddenly shamelessly reminded us that we had lost not only the main Pilot ...

Oh, the magnificent landscape of the second moment: the stars of Aldashin’s “Christmas” float out of the clouds of Olshvang’s “Pink Doll”, reflected in the lake of Petrov’s “Mermaids” ... And in the window - “Grandmother” Zolotukhin feeds pigeons, one of which, perhaps, is the same ... Yes , great and fruitful was the year from the Nativity of Christ 1996, from the beginning of Tarusa - the second.

This never happened again. Although there was Bronzit's "House at the End of the Earth", even the inexhaustible (it turned out to be very exhausting) Lesha Alekseev with his jazz trio Log Jam, from which the continents hiccuped, did not surpass the steepness of his comedy. And the games of the rebellious mind of Ivan Maksimov, and the not-weak debutant Oleg Uzhinov, who quickly and quickly grew into a classic, and Dmitry Geller, the most modest, almost wordless Yekaterinburger with his decadence ... And then - the Big Leap of "Pilot": "Mountain of Gems", one is better than the other . Well, in a word, there is something to remember, and at the same time to mourn. And, of course, a parade of dolls, suddenly recognized as one of the best in the world. Dolls that no computer can make. That is why their birth rate fell exponentially every year.

It took SMF artists in the pre-computer era ten months to draw for ten minutes. Like a child. Now, the head of one of the serial projects confessed, his studio plays for 26 minutes a week. The puppeteers, standing on the verge of a demographic catastrophe, make a film when it's a year, and when it's two or three. Well, it's embarrassing to talk about Norshtein. It's scary to think what kind of Lyapkins-Tyapkins our craftsmen will sculpt in their far-away kingdoms for the next anniversary of Gogol.

In the meantime, the great Tailor "The Overcoat" comes out of every viewing of the competition program with the same face that my husband had when his salary was halved.

The number of animated films was reduced so much that the entire competition program was squeezed into ten hours. The rest of the time in the half-empty cinema hall murmured the "First International Congress", dedicated to the animation industry. Pure theater of the absurd. In the absence of an industry (which is not wine, but a huge misfortune of animation, which was cut off by You Know Who), we decided to discuss its main problems: technology, production and distribution with the involvement of foreign experience. It's useful, of course. But do you know why they don't change horses at the crossing? Not for some sacred reasons - it's just very inconvenient, it's like changing your pants on the go.

Specifically this year (by the will of You Know Who) the entire cinema is in a situation of crossing. Will we cross or not is the question. As they say, this is not the time, comrade, to meditate on the topic “Additional opportunities for digital cinema and alternative content”, as well as “Features of directing stereoscopic cinema”. We would stand the day and hold out the night. We would like to make an artistic product in conditions close to combat. The festival showed that today we have a complete, as they say in my beloved city, abducen with this case. “During the congress, a company such and such will present its image conversion capabilities. Anyone who submits a 2D image will receive it in a few hours in stereo format.” I once asked a familiar nutritionist: “Well, what about sausages?” He shook his finger at me: “Alla, we are talking about food!”

Let's talk about food! Because if we talk about sausages, then you will involuntarily want to make and eat them. And feed the people.

Walking under the walls of the Suzdal Kremlin, I met two natives. “Well, cho,” said one, leaning on the “o”, “will you go to the viewing?” “No,” replied the friend. - I used to love Soviet cartoons, but here is one computer shit ... "

Of course, I am not Yuri Borisovich Norshtein, the noble schemer. I understand that the guys also need to earn. But when the wonderful Oleg Uzhinov, the hero of more than one Tarusa, not only Suzdal, surrenders to the TV series "Masha and the Bear" (3D, do not hesitate), where the disgusting little Masha in an acid shell, the dream of a sausage eater, with his pop-eyed existence offends the memory of his own marvelous hooligan Zhiharka... I'm talking to five fellows from the jury (glorious strokes of the author's animation: Aldashin, Maksimov, Tumel, Naumov, Barbe); I speak as a comrade and partner in board games: look into my eyes, boys. Don't you understand that even smart Uzhinov, having won the prize for the best children's film, will think that he made a good movie?

Or don’t you understand that the brilliant Lesha Alekseev, who was again given the Grand Prix for the continuation of the insanely funny Log Jam (two videos already sucked out of your finger, like an artificial hot dog sausage), will say to himself: yes, I won’t chop thirty more of these worse than Hokusai with his views of Fuji.

Criteria are not just important things. This is, as one friend of mine says, "a fundamental nuance." Criteria is taught like a trade is taught. Therefore, Valentin Olshvang, who worked with Norstein, will never make a hack. Even though his “Rain since the evening” about a mermaid bitch who killed a good man is simpler than his past paintings, the master’s hand has not gone away: both tragedy, and man-made, and humanity. In vain, perhaps, in the professional rating of Olschwang in first place (233 votes). Lesha Alekseev, it’s embarrassing to say - 39 ... Therefore, not Lesha, but Valya Olshvang said, receiving his prize for directing: “I wish you all real creative torment.”

There is hope that his words fell on fertile ground. VGIK made an unexpected breakthrough this year. And the jury, shaking off the wraith of board games, gave, let's face it, the fateful prize to Dina Velikovsky for "The Bridge", the best student film. Dina wears a military helmet and a gray marching frock coat. She herself is terribly red, and the film is all in a fog. And love in him is in a fog that the puppet boy, and the puppet red-haired mother, and father cannot overcome. And when the bridge collapses, then they all finally join on the ice floe. They are dolls. The only one at the festival.

And in the puppet workshop of VGIK, which is directed by director Natalia Dabizha and our best artist-puppeteer Nina Vinogradova, "children" suddenly went in a jamb. Of course, this is not the defeat of the computer. So, a small rebellion, meaningful and merciful.