Films

[petronia]

Today I watched - and I don't recommend this sequence for sanity-preserving purposes but:

1. The first half of Schindler's List;
2. The second half of Ben Hur;
3. A bunch of animated shorts by one Yuri Norstein, that my dad got out of the public library. Crappy transfer, scratchy mono sound, nearly destroyed tape. ...Anyone else seen these? Film students? Animators? Russians? People who like the idea of cult animated short films from the Soviet seventies? Damn you, I know you're out there... Anyhow, if you get a chance to watch these, scrape together the requisite half hour. The first one is called "Fairytales of Fairytales," and... is hard to assign a plot to... but there's soldiers going off to war, and a little girl skipping rope with a bull, and a very cute wolf that cooks potatos and tries to steal paper from a poet who's more interested in his lyre, and a baby, and apples and ravens and snow. It's magnificiently evocative and haunting, given which I almost prefer the second one, which is called "Hedgehog In The Fog" and is about exactly that, like a Russian Beatrix Potter story. We were halfway through a third short that was a romantic comedy of errors between a heron and a crane, but then my dad had to go to bed.
   
   ...Right then, back to anime it is.

Comments

russian animation

[vonbrigthi.livejournal.com]

When we had animation week back in second year History of Illustration, someone brought in a Russian animation, possibly recent. As far as I remember, there was a lot of political satire, and there were these two guys planning some sort of heist and then cannons or anvils start ripping up the roof and one of the guys falls out of bed and then there's space aliens.

Or something weird like that. It was pretty wacky.

It probably didn't help that I didn't understand Russian and I can't really remember what it was about anyways. Cough.

Re: russian animation

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes. Love that Russian political satire. :P

The Norstein is influential, methinks. Won all sorts of prizes.

[z107m.livejournal.com]

I was in an animation class that went through a whole blitz of the "Masters of Animation" series, and artists from half a dozen countries all in one summer really does a number on a kid. Unfortunately I only have vague memories of Norstein's Heron and the Crane.

But surprise, surprise when I encountered him while studying Eisenstein four years ago. At which point Norstein's "October 25th"? I think that was the title... the images themselves are what really stood out to me, but at that time all of politically inclined Soviet film seemed cool to me. :b

If you like Norstein's style, definitely check out Alexander Petrov's "Old Man and the Sea." It won an Oscar a couple years ago (whatever that's worth), and has the same painterly images which are done directly onto glass panels. Its really amazing and I can't help but to love the paint on glass style whenever its used, even in simple commercials. >_

[petronia.livejournal.com]

*nodnod* I remember that from the Oscars, actually! Alas, I don't have any real idea how to get hold of animation shorts, except by accident.

The "Fairytales" one had an anti-war component too, methinks. But then it was densely symbolic all around, and that was after - well. I think maybe watching the first half of Ben Hur followed by the last half of Schindler's List would have been worse, though. XD

[z107m.livejournal.com]

Its sorta like watching LoGH, then the entire universe seems rather political in some manner or another for the next few days. :b

Bucock: "I'm sorry Emperor Reinhard, I want a good friend, not a good lord."

*Reinhard clutches locket* "What do they know of friendship?"

Um, excuse me Reinhard, but last I checked, Kircheis always referred to you with a "sama" honorific.

Hm... that was a strange tangent...

[corneredangel.livejournal.com]

Hedgehog in the Fog/Ёжик в тумане is pretty much beyond "good" or "bad", just sort of there; you wind up watching it at least once every year or so, and like it or not, it makes quite the comfortable home in your brain. Oh, and is, of course, EXTREMELY good and beautiful and haunting and...*something*?

Incidentally, Norstein - as you may have guessed, is no more representative of Russian animation as a whole. No more than, say, the last two episodes of Eva are of anime...

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing. If only because the film class people appear to have heard of him one and all. XD Actually I'm pretty sure I'd heard of him, in some filmfest newspaper article or other, but I couldn't swear as to the name.

I dreamt about "Hedgehog In The Fog" the ensuing night, actually; or more precisely about the white horse. Just one of those images that go straight, straight down to the Jungian subconscious, like some of what you see in Miyazaki films.

[re-miel.livejournal.com]

Sabina, m'dear, you watching 'Ezhik v tumane', the hedgehog one, is almost as bad as me reading Gao XingJian.

But if you must persist in this perversion, I reccomend getting your hands on "Kryl'ya, nogi, hvosty", "Padal proshlogodniy sneg", "Plastilinovaya Vorona", few episodes of 'Nu, pogodi', the whole of 'Adventures of Captain Vrungel', the whole of 'Troe iz Prostokvashino' and above everything - the russian animated version of 'Treasure Island'.

"А через полчаса, те кто останутся в живых..."
[blows a skull-shaped puff of smoke out of his pipe]
"...позавидуют мертвым."

Ah, the bliss...

Offtopic: So what are *you* going to read Mirage of Blaze novels? The linguistical difficulties no long er excuse you, you know, by the virtue of their non-existence...

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Gods. XD You know, I have no idea how to go about tracking this schtuff down systematically. Frankly I'm not sure why the local public library has that tape (obviously pirated copy, incidentally, and wonky to the point that the VCR nearly ate it, and thus was unable to watch further than described above). Ah, well, I'll ask T perhaps.

Gao Xingjian-wise, I'm morally obliged to recommend that you read Soul Mountain in French. Other than that I don't think you'd be doing any worse than my sister. And as for Mirage... you flatter me, or more likely overestimate me. XD It's probably not that I can't read a historical fantasy novel in Japanese, push come to shove, but I wouldn't be able to stand reading a Real Book at my current plodding, fifth-grade, frequent-dictionary-alert speed. The attention span won't have it. At least manga comes with shiny pretty pictures.

I could try, though. Have to put together another Amazon Japan shipment one of these days.

[re-miel.livejournal.com]

Unlike with trashlit, I prefer reading high-lit in the language I am most familiar with, as opposed to that of an original. In case of Gao 'Showoff' Xingjian - most certainly.

And Mirage and reading-speed: I feel your pain. Felt, rather. But the only way to improve your reading speed is to tax it, hard. It will only start to really improve after you start reading novels. And that requires one deep breath, dive, and one-two books worth of pain...

And Mirage is the humane option, really. Its language, as opposed to content, is very simple - and all long-winded names, of people and places, have furigana first time they come up.

And as for motivation - once you get into it, it is ever so yummy. But you know that... :)

[tochira.livejournal.com]

O_O You know, I think that's the guy my Russian Politics prof was pointing me towards, when he started in on the old-school animation and open media. I couldn't find any tapes or anything to build a useful paper on (well, not within a thousand-mile radius anyway), but I'm still looking for stuff to watch.... Crazy.