If you happen to live in southern Ontario, Canada, I encourage you to come to the Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema. The festival schedule is here (it's from Nov. 18-21).

Especially relevant for those with an interest in Russian/Soviet animation is Saturday. At 15:30 there will be a screening of Garri Bardin's new animated feature The Ugly ( Read more... )

...has its Moscow premiere at the 44th Festival of Japanese Film on Nov. 14 at 15:10. I earlier wrote about this film in 2009. Cheburashka became hugely popular in Japan since 2001, when the original Soviet short films were shown in two small Tokyo cinemas and were seen by over 10,000 people. And that provided the impetus for this Japanese/Korean/ ( Read more... )

Click to view

Not a second of boredom in this, one of the very first cartoons made at Soyuzdetmultfilm studio (later renamed Soyuzmultfilm). Directed by Olga Khodatayeva in 1936, it shares themes with some of her other films, such as the 1928 "Samoyed Boy" (video link) and the 1944 "The Stolen Sun" (video linkUnusually for cartoons made at the studio at this ( Read more... )

A 2010-08-27 news report by RIA Novosti says that work on this Soyuzmultfilm animated feature, which I earlier wrote about in 2007, 2008 and 2009, is actually still progressing. I've added English subtitles so you can watch it below.

(if the subtitles don't show, click on the "CC" button)

UPDATE (2011-08-13): The video below won't work now; watch ( Read more... )

In 2008, this project started as an attempt to create the first Moldovan 3D animated short. In 2009, rumours started floating around that it had morphed into a feature film. Now, AWN reports that STV Film (from Russia) is going to fund a planned 5-year production with 5 million euros, and Sympals studio will be hiring 100 workers ( Read more... )

This continues from part 1. The Russian original is here.

Again, good morning. Our guest today is Garri Yakovlevich Bardin, a man who's made around 15 wonderful, very talented animated films.

Twenty.

Exactly twenty, yes? Then it's twenty already. Among them are cartoons that you probably know, such as "Adagio", "Conflict", "Banquet", three " ( Read more... )

This is the first existing trailer for the upcoming animated feature by the award-winning director Garri Bardin, which he's been working on for almost 6 years. The Russian public release will hopefully be on Sept. 16, 2010, while the international premiere is at the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland in August. I did the English ( Read more... )

"Ready or Not, Here I Come" (literal title, "I Go Seek") was directed in 1992 by the mysterious Vlad Fesenko. The actual story of how the film got made is a bit unclear; in the film itself, only the logo of Moscow's Pilot animation studio appears, while animator.ru says that it was made by Uzbekfilm and the Cinema Technologies Group. My guess about ( Read more... )

ValerieChatoner has finally finished her long project of translating this 2007 animated feature by Melnitsa Animation Studio (directed by Vladimir Toropchin). She uploaded part 1 on June 27, 2009, and part 14 on June 30, 2010. Her subtitles serve as a beautiful tool for people wanting to learn Russian, because both languages are displayed ( Read more... )

9 Russian animated films were newly-subtitled in the past month. I'll post most of them in this entry, while a few will be given their own posts.

To see the subtitles, make sure that CC is turned on (click on the triangle in the lower right-hand corner).

"The Little Sparrow", directed by Aleksey Karayev in 1984 (Karayev also directed Welcome, The ( Read more... )