Happy birthday, Yuriy Norshteyn! Bashny.Net

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Birthday author of the best animated film of all time - "Hedgehog in the Fog»

"In my childhood, when I was seriously ill, I was one and the same dream. As if in a black tight parallelepiped is the finest paper stack height of about one meter. And I must quickly and accurately, leaf to leaf, to shift the entire stack of paper in the other place. " "I try to do it as quickly as possible, but the stack is not reduced for a single leaf, and next to the new little thicker. Later, having appeared in a cartoon dealing with tracing paper on which were drawn layout movement, I often returned to the children's sleep. " This - a fragment of autobiography George Norstein.





What people are doing art? First of all - a thirst, irrepressible thirst. Then - to learn something through what you yourself are doing. It's like a child's play: it plays, plays, and finally comes to the result. You too come to the result and say to himself: "That's how it was." In fact, you pass a secret way and gradually along the way something is opened. If you walk out of the fog, and gradually from the "nefokusa" everything becomes clear. When I start to do some work, I never feel that my whole path is clear. Almost everything is unclear. And this ambiguity has its own beauty gradual approach to the set you the truth, which is not known where he was. And this time - it is incredible. It is, so to speak, expands the chest. It gives you a completely different breathing. How does it work?

What can decide the success or the certainty of your work? I have outlined as follows: unity of purpose, that is, you do not know what you get out, but some secret sense of purpose in you should be. And it is not always possible to formulate. There are paradoxes of literature: a classic example of Pushkin, he said: & quot ;: some piece ran away with me Tatiana & quot; - got married. I think that such a state pursues any person. It's more normal than to come up to the end of all, and then pass this way. Although, you know, there are such insight, when some pieces of film as a flash moment. The entire piece from beginning to end, it only remains to write "storyboards". This state comes when you're already in good shape, warmed previous work - that is, all the months of work went into this furnace. But in fact, it is quite tedious multi-step path in the film with all the subordinate clauses, with a strikeout, to throwing the pieces, and then again return to them - a bad path.

As between people collectively engage in creative work, there is a transfer plan. The picture and picture director, for example, an animator, how can they come together? This is the most painful moment. Well, if you're lucky, and beside you was a man, which you know by heart. He, for some parts of your words already knows what it is talking. We had such a harmonic couple with Sasha Zhukovsky. (Indicates a black and white photograph depicting two happy people.) You see, it is in the picture - a cameraman with whom we were shooting "Hedgehog in the Fog" and "The Heron and the Crane." He died four years ago, and for me this is a terrible loss. This is higher than friendship - what happened between us. Sasha and I have worked for many years, and it was just amazing, incredible harmony.

Perhaps, to a large extent I was lucky with the artist Francesca Yarbusovoy because she is my wife. But on the other hand, you correctly said, a matrix, and the other - they have to come together. There is no harmony, sometimes occurs such a scandal, a scream, a rage. That I am now at peace, and when I talk to the artist and he does not understand me, and then have to explain - and again he does not understand, and again stupid does something different, then, in the end, it all means are good. Without battering, though. But how does this exchange? It's like two hands, between which there is some kind of field: The first drafts I always do: storyboard, some compositions. And they are to me for a very, out there in the fog that sometimes just doing their kind of tone. Here, the spot here. And here is starting to obstukivatsya one perception to another. There is some sort of my idea, some quickly drawn action. Following the artist offers something different. So one spot turns into character. And then I start with this character mentally or risunochki work. But how it will play? And suddenly there is some detail that gives him some line, then the other - the character gains concreteness. There is a long exchange between me and the artist. But if there is no exchange, if the artist persists, it does not mean that he is wrong. It may well be that I'm wrong.



Director Yuri Norstein walking around the studio barefoot. This is not a pose. This is the status quo: his studio - this is his house, in which more than twenty years, the author of the best cartoons of all time - "Hedgehog in the Fog" and "Tale of Tales" - silently removes his next film based on the story "The Overcoat».

Why "The Overcoat"? Gogol's text says Norstein same fundamental product, as well as any chapter of the Bible. "Fundamental" - a favorite word in the lexicon Norstein that best reflects his attitude to life, the desire to walk around to the bottom. The unfinished film directed - more than a masterpiece. Made by hand the fundamental work, in great detail and subtlety of recreating the era of psychological portraits of characters.
-Straha That have nothing to do when you have finished "The Overcoat" is not there?
There is a picture, my favorite: is a huge tiger, are two small hunter with guns, and one says to another: "What we goin?" (Laughs infectiously.) Now that I think about. At one time, if I am alive and well. If there is nothing wrong with your head - I will not stupid, it will come new ideas. I actually these films in my head a lot, then we should talk about what life would be enough. In the end, there is no question what films to do before you question, what do you see for themselves the meaning of life.

 - And what do you see the meaning of life?
 - You know what, this question will not answer in monosyllables one. But what I can say - that in fact the meaning of love, it is quite obvious. In love and communion.
 - It must feel, of course.
 - It is necessary to survive. That's all.



The animation uses a special technique Norstein multistoried relaying the image that gives the effect of three-dimensional cartoon image, and refuses to use computer graphics animation.
- WHAT is to make a film? It is to pull out of yourself, here (pointing to his heart. - MM) images rather than there (pointing to his forehead. - MM). The film should be "flashed" through you. I do not know if my film footage that would not be sensibly connected with my life. Even to understand what rhythm snow falls in the frame, it is necessary to listen to the rhythm of the heart muscle. This is the sense of life ... It used to be about him did not give the children to forget now the grandchildren. If you go out and you do not feel the smell of the leaves, do not you see, bubble pools, like an old woman in a store recounts trifle looking counters - you do nothing in art. And be sure to look, just look at the works of the great art of painting. It clears the brain, jealousy disappears, vanishes hysteria about yourself, a loved one.
And still need to watch a silent movie, Kabuki theater, clownery, Chaplin, pantomime, ballet. Movement, gesture expressive speech. I understand that much is being done on a computer is very easy, but I'm not going to use it. Very often synthetic. Water polyethylene. Tolstoy said about spring water: "And if by splinter - it even cleaner." Something like that - "to splinter." Animation for me - that as a child I looked through the lens "photojournalist" and saw another world.



For me, the light - the character of the film. This flesh material, immaterial world. It is no coincidence we say - "the light," "the other world" and not "in the dark". As a child, I lived in a communal apartment. There was a long corridor through the open door into the blinding sun entered the corridor darkness. I still remember the feeling of the heart quiver that now you step over that line and get into the light, into another world. It is I, along with the top out of the darkness to the light house.

I try to avoid the discomfort between the frame and collected in my soul. I have pictures, "hatched" out of my children's drawings, sketches. The head of the baby sucking at the breast in the "Tale" - complete portrait likeness with my six-month-son of Boreas, made with a photograph of the wife keeps him just waking up on his knees. We do not assume how will respond in the future life the most insignificant little things in life momentary. There must be a blood relationship with the image. What you experience stress frame - with such force it materializes on the screen. By itself, the frame with the baby - this impression from my childhood. My aunt got married at the front, came bore. But the child died, and had a lot of milk, and it is to pump it into the cup. I do not know what to say on this subject, Freud, but childhood impression - a woman's breast milk, and - perhaps the main imprint on my life. Hence the attitude toward women as a divine being.

For the character of the dance floor "Tales" I enjoyed the photos of my neighbors children in the background log barn. It's absolutely priceless evidence of the time of the year 1934-1935. People look straight into your eyes. The children of those years. Children with adult eyes. Did you know: that he died in prison, he was released, but became an invalid, the other worked for the KGB ...

How I was born the face Akaky? From children's benevolent - too strong imprint in my heart when I saw a pulsing "fontanelle" children's heads. Attach the impression of real persons, not related to my Gogol's hero - the great physicist, Nobel Prize winner Pyotr Kapitsa, conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky, a great painter Saryan father operator Alexander Zhukovsky, with whom I worked ... Those great creative moment, "unconsciousness "childishness. They imprinted, "compacted" life. What does an artist? He seals the life in the works, the whole past life - in one moment.

In this sense, Gogol had magical properties: a proposal to insert into one word - and everything becomes unrecognizable! For example, a flute player, "whistled once in the orchestra." Do not "play" and even "whistled", and "hands on"! Or: "Sobakevich reached - after the sturgeon." I do not "eaten up" and "drove"! But do not think that I live in one of "The Overcoat" ("The Overcoat" Norstein doing for many years. - MM), go so pale Piero. No it's OK. Once said Alex Herman: "I thought I'd see," Sorrows of Young Werther "and saw a gay man, who immediately tried to recapture my companion».

His works rezhisser proved that animation is not just entertainment, and art form. Works Jury Norstein not always called cartoons and philosophical works. They are filled with hidden meaning, but it is clear to all - both adults and children.



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