Thursday 30 July 2009

The little grey wolf will come...

Anyone remotely interested in animation should give this one a look: Yuri Norstein and Tale of Tales by Clare Kitson describes how the film was put together, how Norstein and Russia's 'mafia of decent folk' deceived KGB censors in order to keep the project alive, and how if grew out of autobiographical elements as well as Russian culture more generally.

Norstein really deserves to be better known outside of Russia, but I don't think his obsessive perfectionism helps: he's been working on a feature-length adaptation of Gogol's short story The Overcoat since 1981. Tale of Tales has been voted best animated film ever on at least three occasions. His previous film, Hedgehog in the Fog, is almost as extraordinary (apparently a drunk Russian walks "like a hedgehog in the fog" after it).



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