Yuri Borissowitsch Norstein

Yuri Borissowitsch Norstein (2009)

Juri Borissowitsch Norstein ( Russian Ю́рий Бори́сович Норште́йн ; born September 15, 1941 in Andrejewka , Penza Oblast ) is a Russian animated film maker.

biography

Norstein was born in 1941 to Jewish parents in a village near Kamenka in Penza Oblast, where his mother (1912–2001), a kindergarten teacher, had been evacuated; the father (1905–1956), a worker in a furniture factory, was already at the front . In 1943, mother and son returned to Moscow . After finishing school, Norstein attended a two-year course in animation at the state animation studio Soyuzmultfilm , where he got a full-time job in 1961.

While Norstein was not enthusiastic about the animation films Soyuzmultfilm was making at the time, he finally found a role model there when he saw the films by Sergei Eisenstein and wanted to become a director himself.

As an animator he worked on numerous films until he was able to make his first film as a director in 1967 with 25-e - Perwyi den (Eng. "25th - The First Day"). In this he processed his interest in Russian avant-garde painters of the early 20th century such as Kusma Petrow-Wodkin and Natan Altman .

Other short films followed, often based on Russian folk tales. Together with his wife Francesca Jarbusowa (* 1942), whom he had met at Soyuzmultfilm, and his cameraman Alexander Schukowski (1933–1999) he developed his own animation method. The drawing is applied to different thick layers of glass. A publication of the film Zaplja i schurawl (1974, German "The Heron and the Crane") was originally supposed to be prevented by the censorship authorities, but thanks to the efforts of Fyodor Chitruk (1917–2012) it did appear.

Soviet postage stamp with a motif from Joschik w tumane

When the following film Joschik w tumane (German Igelchen im Nebel ) was supposed to be finished, Norstein had only finished 20 percent of the film, but when he showed his superiors the already finished material and they were impressed, he was given permission to continue working and the film to complete. This film is about a hedgehog who gets lost in the fog in search of his friend the bear and is scared.

In 1979 the 23-minute film The Story of Stories was released , which is based on childhood memories and was made in collaboration with the playwright Lyudmila Petrushevskaya . This won several awards, including the grand prize at the Ottawa International Animation Festival , and in 1985 was named "Best Animated Film of All Time" by a commission at the Los Angeles Olympic Arts Festival .

Since 1981 Norstein has been working on a film adaptation of Nikolai Gogol's Der Mantel . This should include the length of the feature film. Because of his slow and perfectionist way of working, Norstein was fired from Soyuzmultfilm in 1985. Since then, the project has repeatedly suffered from a lack of funding.

In 1993 he founded the SHAR Studio together with other animators .

In 1995 he was awarded the "Triumph", a prestigious award for art and literature in Russia, awarded in 2004 in Japan with the Order of the Rising Sun . With the Japanese animator Kihachirō Kawamoto he worked in 2003 on his project Fuyu no Hi and in 2005 as an animator in the film The Book of the Dead .

Filmography

• 1967: 25-e - Pervyi den ( 25-е ​​- первый день )
• 1971: Setscha pri Kerschenze ( Сеча при Керженце )
• 1973: Lisa i sajaz ( Лиса и заяц )
• 1974: Zaplja i shurawl ( Цапля и журавль )
• 1975: Joschik w tumane ( Ёжик в тумане , German Igelchen im Nebel )
• 1979: The History of Stories ( Сказка сказок , Skaska skasok )
• 2003: Fuyu no Hi ( 冬 の 日 ) (1st segment)

literature

• Liz Faber and Helen Walters: Animation Unlimited. Innovative Short Films Since 1940 . London 2004, Laurence King Publishing, ISBN 1-85669-346-5 , pp. 114-115

Web links

Commons : Juri Norstein  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Yuriy Norshteyn in the Internet Movie Database (English)