About the bitter fate of a woman told the language of animation

The main Russian animation festival, which was held for the 28th time, ended in Suzdal. Its program included films made over the past year. The main award in the author’s animation went to “Bright Souls” by Anastasia Zhakulina based on the story by Vasily Shukshin – a graphic, pulsating story about the difficulties of love, where a woman so lacks male attention.

She is jealous of her husband for everyone and everything, even for the truck. He returned from the flight, and all thoughts are about the carburetor. He does not care for his wife as much as he does for him. And it is important for a woman to feel the owner in the house, and she purses her lips with displeasure. Shukshin is rarely translated into the language of animation, but he turned out to be so plastic, he opened up so many possibilities!

However, something happened that, perhaps, has never happened in the entire history of the festival. The rating of the professional community did not radically coincide with the choice of the jury. The first place there by a wide margin was taken by “Dear Passengers” by director, artist and animator Max Kulikov. So it is a tradition for him to be the president of the Suzdal festival in a year. And the film is about a crazy train that rushes to no one knows where, and the passengers are the whole country. The brave paratroopers are traveling in a compartment with a pious old woman, who unexpectedly turned out to be an excellent drinking buddy. A pot-bellied uncle in sweatpants lays out supplies of food, and the compartment turns into a butcher’s shop with hams and sausages descending from the ceiling. In the neighborhood, obnoxious children are yelling. They walk on their heads, make a fire, buzz like bees. Not a single man can indifferently pass by a conductor with textured forms, especially if he is a paratrooper. And now, in his imagination, she turns into a pole dancer. And outside the window, forests and fields flash by, a snow-white horse gallops. Life is good and life is good. But the madness of the world, concentrated inside the train, knows no bounds. All this is so famously and talentedly invented. It is strange that the jury did not notice the film, which became the undisputed leader of the festival.

“Music of a Summer Night” by Alexander Vasilyev was awarded a special prize by the jury. A car is speeding along the highway. The driver did not understand who crossed his path, and therefore asked: “What are you, a collective farmer? Can’t wait for the next world? He put an old woman named Death in the car, and they flew further at speed, picking up sister Alyonushka along the way with a kid, into which brother Ivanushka had turned. And again they rushed to distant distances, either into the arms of God, or to the next world. Another hero will appear on the screen, similar to the director Ivan Maksimov. Doubts were dispelled by the appearance of his young wife Shura.

The Jury Prize was given to one of the best works of the year – “Sunflower” by Natalia Chernysheva. She has been living in France for a long time, studied there and now makes films, as someone joked, on unemployment benefits. Sunflowers are like people. They cheerfully do gymnastics, march under the “Fly the Bonfires”, they are able to feel, but someone is completely devoid of any emotions whatsoever. Among the student works, the painting “In Search of the Brain” by Ksenia Danilevskaya was in the lead, where a high school student prepares for an exam, rubs textbooks on a grater, turns notebooks into noodles. His head is full of information, and his brain opens like a tin can.

But the main characters of this year are women. They are beautiful and hideous, furies and victims. “The 21st Man of Vera” by Ekaterina Kuricheva tells about a heroine with a rich past, a pretty shabby life. She hurries on a date to a suburban station, gets a pedicure on the train, brushes her teeth with dental floss, manages to swallow an annoying fellow traveler who decides to pester. Nearby, the aunt shakes a tiny man in her arms, stuffs him into a checkered bag. Small, inferior, but his own and meek. And Vera calls her lover to no avail, but he does not answer. The almost 17-minute Wormwood-25 by Nadia Goldman is dedicated to 30-year-old Natasha, a pink woman whose life is boring, although she has a husband and a lover. And the problem is that as a child she was stuck in an elevator and still cannot escape from the darkness. The woman is so small, and the men are huge, sometimes unpleasant, but you have to get along with them, and Natasha also becomes unpleasant, carries a threat.

Animated characters are the most incredible. For example, tights with a rich imagination, fearful of everything (they are also like a woman, with feelings and disappointment). There is also a heroine who became pregnant from the rain, Pushkin with six arms, resembling Buddha. The unbelievable does not seem fantastic in that special and bizarre world that always resembles the real. The animation community is unlike any other. These are bright, extraordinary people in everything. The girls wear ears, the boys wear caps, they dress fancy, creating a carnival and sometimes gothic mood. On the chest of someone – a whole zoo of felt animals, which they themselves create. Artists and directors can spend hours discussing some kind of cow dress that will cause confusion among the right colleagues. But who knows what a cow’s robe should be, because she is like a woman.

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 28993 dated March 21, 2023

Newspaper headline:
cow dress