By Vestnik Kavkaza
The Big Festival of Cartoons returns in Moscow on October 26 and will last for 12 days.
Dina Goder, the program director of BFC-2012, film expert, theater critic
Importance and charm of the festival is that it is rated for any kind of audience. There are many programs about children for adults, teenagers, the old, cartoon specialists, and those who want to have fun. One can create his own cartoon at the cartoon factory – we have a whole factory with cardboard workshops where young directors create cartoons together with children. One can watch series, for example, for children while eating and drinking cocoa. A lot of opportunities.
One of central programs is called “First Run.” This program is always very popular because we show cartoons shot by Russian directors during the last year.
Moreover, we have the program “School” where we demonstrate young multiplication – cartoons shot by students or graduators of universities. The program devoted to the 100th anniversary of Russian cartoons is “Silent Cartoons. Live Music.” We have a plenty of Russian cartoons which have never been showed, published, and they are wonderful. We will have a cartoon concert where they will be demonstrated. The program will begin from the film of 1912 by Vladislav Starevich, a pioneer of our cartoon animation. Other cartoons will be of the 1920s. Georgy Borodin collected them especially for us. An outstanding band from Tallinn will accompany us – a crazy, bright band. Its leader, composer, musician, Kaspar Yantsis is a cartoon director too. His cartoon Villa Antropoff is a nice story which takes place at the abandoned villa of the former general secretary Andropov. I think it will be a joyful concert which is worthy attendance.
Maria Tereshchenko, the program director of BFC-2012
I cannot tell you the history of the Caucasus animation in one sentence. Multiplication in Georgia was born before the war. They have strong traditions. Armenian cartoons have powerful traditions too. As for the Soviet audience in general, Armenian cartoons were the most popular due to the genius of Robert Saakyants who created “In the blue sea, in white foam”, “Maslenitsa!”, “Wow, Speaking Fish!” Everybody knows them well: they are funny and lambent. The other interesting moment is that one of the major Soviet animators Lev Atamanov (he is the author of “The Snow Queen”, “The Golden Antelope”, “The Scarlet Flower” and all best cartoons) began his career in Armenia. A lot was connected with the Caucasus in the Soviet multiplication. Unfortunately, today the situation is very bad. I talked to Georgians about it: cartoons are not supported, studios are destroyed. Actually, if you look at any cartoon festival today, you won’t find Georgian, Armenian, or Azerbaijani works there. Few works are produced. For example, I have seen only one Azerbaijani cartoon for 10 years, even though annually I watch thousands of cartoons. One Azerbaijani, some Georgian works created for children at children studios, and several Armenian cartoons – too little. A lot was done under Saakyants even in the 2000s: the series Taverna; animation educational programs on geography and so on.
Of course national Georgian, Ossetian, and other fairytales are filmed – in “Mountain of Gems” Natasha Berezova had “Proud Mouse”, as far as I remember it is an Ossetial fairytale. There are many examples. For instance, a Georgian lullaby is in the project “Lullabies of the world”, as well as an Armenian lullaby. “Mountain of Gems” includes a Dagestan fairytale. We, Russian animators, don’tforget about the Caucasus; wonderful cultural Caucasian heritage is widely used in cartoons.
This year the festival will have a new professionalprogram “Anima Campus” where students from various countries will try to create thematic cartoons. Another innovation is a variety of special programs. At the moment we are going beyond our limits: for instance, we have a Halloween program and genre programs. We have extended the audience part as sometimes we used to come to arthouse. This time we have a plenty of programs for mass audience: both children and adults. What is our peculiarity? First of all, the volume as I cannot remember any other festival presenting such a big volume and variety. Secondly, we are available. As a rule cartoon festivals are oriented at professionals; they are held in small towns and small places, and it is difficult to get there. Thirdly, our special actions, for example, a cartoon factory, the concert. This year we will have stereo-animation, 3D animation. A producer from Canada will tell us about it, will show us how to transform cartoons into stereo-cartoons. We try to create something new always to make the show unusual, modern, and bright.
Pavel Shvedov, the curator of the Russian cartoon exhibition
We will demonstrate the movie “Beautiful Lyukanida” which is a starting point of the Russian animation. The exhibition is devoted to cartoon characters which were created by Soviet and Russian directors. We would like to remind everybody about them. We want to present these characters from a professional point of view – when a character is not completed, when a director, a photographer and a crew are in the middle of the working process and still don’t know what result they will have.
The majority of materials have never been shown before. We also use copies to show a mystery of giving birth to a character. A person who comes to the exhibition begins a certain dialogue with himself and feels emotions caused by the characters which he will look at from the other side.
