Posts Tagged ‘film’
24
Jun
2010
Vintage Russian Animation: Top 5
What dancing ballerinas and hungry kings have to do with the dawn of the digital age.
While Walt Disney was building an animation empire in America, a thriving school of animation mastery was unfolding on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Russian art directors, illustrators, animators and video producers were experimenting with techniques often decades ahead of their time and creating beautifully crafted, visually stunning short films despite the technological limitations of the era. Many of these masterpieces are now available in Masters Of Russian Animation — a remarkable collection of animated shorts from the 1960’s through the 1980’s in four volumes.
Today, we look at five of these gems, with many thanks to reader Sebastian Waack (@edutechnews) for bringing some of them to our attention.
HEDGEHOG IN THE FOG (1975)
Based on a Russian folk tale, Hedgehog in the Fog, a 1975 gem by master-animator Yuri Norstein, utilized techniques like cutout-animation and stop-motion three decades before they reached creative buzzword status.
Thinking about how these effects were achieved — brilliantly — in the age of manual, analog studio production does give one pause in the face of all the digital tools we take for granted today.
Found on Volume 2.
STORY OF A CRIME (1979)
Director Fyodor Khitruk’s Story of a Crime is part Hanna-Barbera, part Hitchcock, part something else entirely. Using techniques like cutout collages and photo-illustration hybrids long before they had entered the mainstream animation arsenal, the film won the Jury Prize at the prestigious 1980 film festival in Lille, France.
You can catch part 2 here. Found on Volume 1.
THE SINGING TEACHER (1968)
From director Anatoly Petrov comes The Singing Teacher, an eerie, haunting, stunningly illustrated gem from 1968.
Found on Volume 1.
THE KING’S SANDWICH (1985)
Based on the famous A. A. Milne poem The King’s Breakfast, director Andrey Khrzhanovsky’s The King’s Sandwich features intricate line illustration and remarkably expressive characters from the dawn of computer animation.
Found on Volume 3.
BALLERINA ON A BOAT (1969)
With its minimalist lines and intricate play of perspectives, director Lev Atamanov’s Ballerina on a Boat is a lovely exercise in storytelling through grace and simplicity.
Found on Volume 2.
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22
Jun
2010
Press Pause Play: The Evolving Creative Landscape
From basement art to media glory, or why ones and zeros are the new chalk.
A few months ago, we raved about a new film about the change in production, consumption and distribution of creative works.
Today, we’re taking a closer look at Press Pause Play, the ambitious effort to dissect and document the evolution of today’s creative landscape.
A new generation of global creators and artists is emerging, equipped with other points of reference and other tools. The teachers aren’t certified schools anymore — it’s web sites, discussion forums and a “learn by doing”-mentality. We see the children of a digital age, unspoiled or uneducated depending on who you ask. Collaboration over hierarchy, digital over analog — a change in the way we produce, distribute and consume creative works.
The film comes from the team behind the 2020 Shaping Ideas Project and features interviews with an incredibly wide spectrum of creative visionaries, from the pop stars to the businessmen, the basement filmmakers to the studio heads.
Set to release in ealry 2011, Press Pause Play will embody the very principles it preaches — cross-platform distribution, a high-quality viewing experience both in theaters and on the mobile screen, and an open model that makes the final film free for anyone to watch, broadcast and distribute.
Catch interviews, quotes and behind-the-scenes footage on the PressPausePlay YouTube channel and take a look at some exculive production photos on Flickr.
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