CHRONICLE’S INTERVIEW
Yuri Norstein: Animation Is as Genuine as a Dream, An Interview
Yuri Norstein is perhaps the
most respected contemporary animator in the world. Many
critics, fellow animators and experts in the field of animation
consider his film Tale of Tales, made in 1979, as
the greatest animated film of all time. His previous films, The
Heron and the Crane (1974) or Hedgehog in the Fog (1975)
have also won many prizes at some highly acclaimed festivals
of animation.
He has achieved this international acclaim
thanks to his extraordinary way of using cut-out and a
multiplane rostrum camera as well as to his mastery in
creating delicate atmospheric modulation made by the use
of very few colours and nuances. A dense concentration
of visual events and symbols in each film frame, a skilful
simulation of the effects of lighting, mist and night view
and an exceptional imaginative way of story telling are
just a few additional components on which Norstein built
his poetic universe. Of the same importance is the content
of his films, composed as they are of eastern spiritual
heritage, Russian fairy-tails, oriental philosophy and
European positivism and, as he put it, dreams survived
from childhood.
He was born in 1941 in Andreevka, a small village near
Moscow where his Byelorussian family had found refuge from
the war. After several different jobs, among others he
worked as a manual worker in a furniture factory, he joined
the Sojuzmultifilm where
he worked as an in-betweener, artistic director and animator
in a number of films until he finally made his debut as
director (together with A. Turin) on The 25th: The First day,
a film about the October Revolution made in avant-garde
manner.
His big break came when he started working
with the legendary Russian animator Ivan Vano Ivanov on
whose animated feature The
Left-Handed he worked as the artistic director. Together
with Vano he co-directed The Battle of Kerzhents (1970),
an ambitious project, based on a Russian fresco painting,
which was the winner of the first Zagreb Festival in 1972.
That was his first international success. In the following
nine years he made three more films, which have definitively
established him as one of the greatest authors in the history
of animated films.
In the interview by our contributor Midhat
Ajanovic, Norstein speaks about Sergej Eisenstein and how
he influenced his interest in filmmaking. He describes
his beginnings in Sojuzmultifilm and
his relationship with Ivan Vano Ivanov. Special attention
is given to his life project, the animated feature based
on Gogols story The Overcoat that he has been working
on for almost 35 years. Norstein depicts in detail the
way in which he has made all his films and explains his
perception of visual story telling, computer animation
and other phenomena connected with animation in the present
time.
He perceives animation as a realistic media or as he put
it: »a media as genuine as a dream«.
The text is accompanied by Norstein’s filmography.
Midhat Ajanović |
