Raking darkness

Instead of an anniversary toast

Yuri Borisovich Norshtein intended to be born in Maryina Grove in Moscow. But the war confused his plans, and he was born in the village of Andreevka, Golovnishchensky district of the Penza region (September 15, 1941). Soon, however, the young Yuri Borisovich returned to Maryin Roshch, where he realized himself as a man and lived in harmony with the post -war Moscow time. The Grinsk Wolch saved Yuri Borisovich from the bad influence of Maryina Roshchi, and he grew up with a red -headed curly, curious boy, although he did not exhaust himself with school classes. He examined the world and the faces inhabiting it, painted them in his imagination, and when he became older, he transferred them to paper.

Sometimes he looked at the windows of the weaving factory, which was in the courtyard opposite, on the oily air of the workshops leaving in the dusk, on the infinitely monotonous movements of people, the thoughtlessness of these movements of copying machines.

Yuri Borisovich did not think about anything in these minutes, but the brain by his will memorized the picture, pushed into the dark corner of consciousness with other unnecessary rubbish.

They say that the Japanese, if they do not use the thing for a year or two, throw it away. The thought, however, is not a thing, and Yuri Borisovich is not a Japanese, although there he will be revered in the manner of a cinematic deity not only for a brilliantly realized idea to remove the animation along the hockey basso.

His films “Hedgehog in the Fog” and “The Tale of Tales” are recognized as the best animation of all time. Fair.

After many years, the image of a dull butter (now from lamp oil) will appear in the Norzhtein "overcoat", a masterpiece of incomparable, never finished, because continuing as our living life, and Yuri Borisovich, and Bashmachkina Akaki Akakievich.

- Yes, I did not think about the "overcoat" at all, and I was not interested in a movie with animation. I dreamed of becoming a painter. I was worried about the ratio of color and shape. And the story of Bashmachkin will never end, ”Yuri Borisovich says cheerfully. - In relation to him, I feel the same feelings that fill me up when I look at the little children playing in the sandbox.

My heart is squeezed: it seems that who will disappear from their life, nothing will change. They will not notice. They have to find out everything.

And his films are recognition. You entered this path - you must know.

Once he told the operator Sasha Zhukovsky about the tonality of the frame that he had to rake the darkness in him.

Yuri Borisovich rakes, and it is light nearby.

Now he has a birthday. We congratulate and undertake to wait for his new, always surprising phenomena. Whether it’s a movie, an exhibition, a book, a drawing, a lecture or a meeting where it is on stage, and we are in the hall or all together at the table. By God, it is not a sin to raise a glass for the sage of Norshtein and his personal genius, who does not give him peace for joy.