Alexander Tatarsky died

Alexander Tatarsky - screenwriter, animator, author of wonderful, beloved cartoons by generations ("Plasticine Crow", "Last Year's Snow Was Falling", "The Other Side of the Moon", "Koloboks Are Investigating") and artistic director of the high-class studio "Pilot" - this was the last a person next to whom you could think about death. And at 56, and before, he was always incredibly lively and bright, active and irrepressible, with that special “childish” activity that is most associated with life, always full of the most fantastic ideas. Recently he was preparing a new full-length project (retro history, very musical, very expensive and promising to be very significant) - Tatarsky rushed around with him everywhere, talked and discussed ideas, he was an excited and joyful man on the rise, a man in good shape. There were many problems, including with financing the studio itself and the new film, but still nothing foreshadowed such an abrupt stop. My heart stopped beating in my sleep.

Now it is obvious that this ebullient vitality will be terribly missed by the people who surrounded him, and those whom he taught, and those whom he simply influenced (and there are many of them), and his studio, and animation in general, and just life .

Everything Tatarsky did in animation was bright, energetic, positive and amazingly meaningful. And the point is not that from him, say, we learned how to work in animation with plasticine. He was not the first and not the only one who worked with him. But his frantic rhythm and energy in working with the material turned out to be unique. This has not happened and still does not happen in Russian films. In Tatarsky, we do not have time to follow the countless transformations of people and objects into each other; we have to look a hundred times before it becomes clear how and what, for example, a teapot turns into.

Another unique quality of Tatarsky was his ability to be one of the first to make films “for children and adults” and, moreover, based on the absurd, which was very unusual - after all, the Russian tradition is, in fact, narrative. He himself was a defiantly witty, expressive person, he loved to tell how as a child he dreamed of becoming a clown, but this clown turned out to be extremely paradoxical, too verbal for a simply funny wit. And this verbality, this rapid absurdity influenced a huge number of directors, no matter who followed him or were repelled by his ideas and manner.

One of Tatarsky’s most important and important undertakings was his studio “Pilot” (first state-owned, then the first private), which still remained the largest and best in the country. What is important is not only the fact of its existence and not only its projects, such as the global fairy-tale series “Mountain of Gems.” It is also important that, firstly, Tatarsky created a school, he turned out to be an excellent teacher of a huge number of people, at one time, when there was still very little work here, scattered all over the world right up to Hollywood, where their incredibly high training was appreciated .

Secondly, Alexander Tatarsky remained one of the few adherents of the studio idea in animation. The fact is that now animation can be done on the knee, at home, it’s just a matter of equipment. But Tatarsky insisted on the importance of the studio, teamwork, the possibility of transferring skills from junior to senior, and that the studio “soup” boiling with ideas cannot be replaced by any equipment. In his studio, with its “iron” artistic council and straightforward artistic director, in which fairly strict, although very friendly, management was carried out, there was a cheerful and pleasant atmosphere, which everyone who went through “Pilot” remembers as happiness. The studio became the center of animation life. All the animators who came to Moscow from other cities first went to see “Pilot”. Where else? It was a studio-home, and there are no more like them.

Meanwhile, Tatarsky easily caught fire with ideas, became obsessed with them, carried them through to completion, and just as often failed to implement them. In his “pilot” times, he himself did not shoot so much (especially in comparison with the number of his scripts, from which other “pilot” projects were filmed) - “Gone with the Wind”, the adult pop art film “Red Gate Rashomon”, “The Interpretation of Dreams” "(a darkly ironic episode from the fairy-tale series "Mountain of Gems"). The film “The Arrival of a Train” turned out to be unrealized; they say that all that was left of it was an absolutely outstanding rough material of 40 minutes.

Alexander Tatarsky was not only a passionate and passionate person, but also a quick-tempered one, not only open and frank, but also undiplomatic and inconvenient. He could blurt out something like that to the officials, which is why the studio and projects were financed much worse than one could have expected in principle.

What is left behind him now are his brilliant ideas, drafts, finished works, students, memories of heat, directness and energy, which can and will definitely fuel Russian animation for some time to come.

Gleb MYSHKIN