Russian Feature Animation: The Lost Letter

Here’s a 1945 Russian animated feature about a Cossack who is traveling to deliver a letter to the Tsarina in St. Petersburg. The letter is stolen by a devil and the Cossack goes into hell to retrieve it. It’s a dark and beautiful film with a good sense of humor and wonderful character animation. The backgrounds are mysterious and I have seldom seen nighttime so perfectly depicted.  It’s based on a story by Nikolai Gogol and was directed by the Brumberg sisters and Lamis Bredis.

Click the  Continue reading link for parts 2, 3, and 4.

I found this at Cartoon Brew

Continue reading

Animation: Khabrahol (From Russia’s Toonbox Studio)

From Russian animation studio Toonbox comes this marvelous animation based on a poem by Sasha Svirsky. I don’t understand a word of it but I love the sound of it. I really must find the woman who does the voice-over.  She is just magnificent and totally fearless.  The drawings are fascinating.  The rhythm is catchy.  Toonbox does so many of the best animations that I see.  They seem to balance their commercial projects with artistic ones very well.

Via Cold Hard Flash

New Year Animation From Russia’s Toonbox Animation Studio

When Russians make animations they do it better than anyone else. Toonbox is an animation studio in Russia and they’ve made this little New Year greeting that illustrates the Chinese year of the ox giving way to the new year of the tiger. It’s beautiful. I like Russian animation above all others. They seem to maintain a lovely, rough, hand-drawn, physical connection to what they are doing. They are an antidote to the completely lifeless injection-molded work of Disney and Pixar.

I found this via Cold Hard Flash