Translated material
Animation journey
On September 10 in Kyiv, the ship “Zirka Dnipra” with the festival “Krok” on board moored. 30 countries participating. 140 films in the competition. 4 decks of passengers 
The ingenious idea of the general director of the international festival of animated cinema "Krok" Irina Krapenichnaya to conduct it on the ship solves two serious problems - financial and psychological. The freight of the ship is cheaper than the hotel, and the hermetic space of the four -deck vessel builds powerful human ties. If we take into account that the festival on the account is the twentieth, then this is no longer a team, but a family. Even foreigners who arrive at Krok, we know almost everyone in person. This is not one, perhaps, an optimistic explanation. World animation is very slowly growing with new names. This is a leisurely, painstaking (and “overcoat” by Yuri Norshtein in this sense has already become a symbol), moreover, film schools very rarely release artists with a distinct personality, since the cult of the master is strong in animation, as nowhere, nowhere.
Such as Julia Aronova and Natalya Mirzoyan (ten years in independent animation) can be counted on the fingers. There is nothing in common between the directors-nesters, except for the main apparatus of the animator-an artistic mind. Natasha, a certified philosopher and psychologist, shoots a parable, complex both in a stylist, and in theory. Julia - of those units that are doing children's animation today. But her simple painted movie wonderfully unpredictably and freely from the framework “will understand - will not understand”. This is always a cocktail of cautious lyricism and irony. However, a cocktail, experts say, requires at least three ingredients. The third component is absurd, such a lifesaver in art for children. Many are waving it, but with a regrettable small efficiency. Julia uses this risky instrument with the confidence of Harry Potter. “My mother of the plane” received one of the highest prizes “Croka” - “plasticine crow”, a prize named after Alexander Tatarsky “For the Higher Assemble”. An exceptionally simple plot: everyone has different mothers, and which is not, and I have a mother - a plane! And in the end there is still a dad a steamer, and all questions are completely removed ...
I can’t explain why Natalia Mirzoyan was only a diploma. An ant of the whole ant century builds his Taj Mahal. When you knew, and from which Sora. Material - different varieties of tea. The film is meaningful, dramatic and picturesque, shocking the picturesquency of the garbage dump.
I asked if Natasha was in India.
“Of course,” she was surprised, as if roaming with a backpack in India is the most common thing.
In general, now in the animation there is an unusual process of migration, pure travel, mainly towards the southeast (of course, this applies to the generation of thirty years-when there is already money and there is still a drive). At many festivals, “Madagascar” (Grand Prix of last year’s “Croka”), the trip diary of the 30-year-old Frenchman Bastien Dubois, raised. This year, Bastien brought two plots from the television series “Portraits from travel”-delicately mocking “Moscow” and “Dordon” (a prize of spectator sympathies). The Italian from Switzerland Mauro Carraro, along with his hero, made a journey along the path of St. Jacob, although he himself did not reach “to Santiago” (special prize jury). Canadian Martina Shartran travels in search of her black roots (MacPherson), for four years laying a sharp turn to Russia, where Alexander Petrov studies in Yaroslavl in Yaroslavl.
Dmitry Geller, Toncach from Yekaterinburg, is carried away to China, where he removes with Chinese animators a completely Chinese scroll “I saw a cat's mice” (prize in category I, films from 5 to 10 minutes), and the words that I apply to the animation - “Chinese work” - gain a literal meaning.
We spoke with the master from St. Petersburg by Konstantin Bronzit (chairman of the qualifying commission), one of the few who can do ridiculous animation today (our second big craftsman for this part, Aleksey Alekseev, moored in Hungary, Aleksey Budovsky - already in Columbia).
- Sometimes I am scared that I will sit in St. Petersburg and draw a movie until the end of days.
- Well, do not change the profession.
- No. But something needs to be done.
- Travel?
- Perhaps. The guys say it refreshes the brains ...
The boundaries of the world are parted, the angle of view changes. The artist sees more, and his wide -angle optics is dramatic. I have long been watching how animation, firstly, loses in humor and, secondly, grows up. Starting as a movie exclusively for children, where there was no arthouse at all, the animation goes into the complex area of old age and death, interpersonal and national relations, into the problems of the subconscious.
On one of the competitive programs (a separate chip of the director of the programs of Alika Spyluk is a thematic selection), the audience seemed to be laid down on the couch of a psychoanalyst. However, jokes from the dark depths of the subconscious, in all, see, shocked the jury. None of the programs of the program was awarded any references. Meanwhile, out of six ribbons, at least two were clearly prize. The “snow -covered rider” of Alexei Turkus - about children's fears and complexes and the “password from the unconscious” of Chris Landret (Canada) - a reckless “black” television show from the hero’s subconscious, reminded the avant -garde English Mental Movies “Be John Malkovich”.
In general, if you compare the work of animated and game jury, you notice a certain frightening pattern. All of them clearly prefer depression, depression and sadness (preferably fatal) - irony, humor and "ease of being." Only before the glorified Czech Michaela Pavlatova did not resist. The “tram”-the phallic fantasies of the wagon, the rampant sexual comic awakened the main instinct on the “Scalp of the Council”. Grandfather Freud did not doze, pulled out a special prize from the jury with a mischievous prazhanka with the formulation “For the Tram of Desires”.
In the III category (from 10 to 50 minutes), the two most funny tapes of the festival are the parody of Alexander Bubnov (Kyiv) “Sherlock Holmes and Black Maschiki” and excellent, with chic, Blalance Blagonada “on the Poshok” (suicide all night before his death, walks with this death, dissecting it on a motorcycle, by pumping it up and herself to beoprootes. - Lander Keuppens, Belgium) were awarded with diplomas. The prize in the category went to Andrei Ushakov for the sad story “Mother and Son”. The black and white graphics of the sleepy space of the Russian hinterland, from where the son unsuccessfully tries to take the old woman-mother on a motorcycle (in general in the image of a motorcycle, beloved by animators, there is something deadly) ... Andrei Ushakov himself admitted that the “mother and son” of Sokurov, and the “father and daughter” of Dudok villed and nourished him. And the cinema is really thin, with a strong mood, where the cumulus sky significantly presses the Oblomovsky feather bed on small people with their love ...
Well, they would give him a Grand Prix. And the prize in the category is a cheerful Belgian.
But the Grand Prix of the Krok festival (plus, of course, a small envelope: we are poor but proud) took Daniel Saus in the USA for the picture “Wild”, painting, 2D computer. The story of Mowgli in the city. The annotation says that the author "turns to the traditional topics of mythology, studying the archetypes of human nature and the internal struggle of the rational and unconscious."
And for my taste - I would write dissertations.
PS, according to tradition, at each parking of the ship from Odessa to Kyiv, the festival participants performed in orphanages, schools and cinemas. And in Sevastopol, the Ukrainian city of Glory of the Russian Fleet, they gave a triumphal concert to sailors.