Yellow Crocodiles and Blue Oranges


Book Description

"In 1999, Boris Yeltsin passed a resolution to resurrect the biggest cartoon studio in Eastern Europe, Soiuzmul'tfil'm. From the mid-1930s until its forced demise in the mid-1990s, the studio had produced more than 1,500 films. Yeltsin felt it important that Soiuzmul'tfil'm be restored to its former glory, and even proposed keeping its original name, a nationally famous acronym made from the three Russian words for "union" (soiuz), "animation" (mul'tiplikatsiia) and "film" (fil'm). But the union referred to had vanished in 1991. Was reviving the studio a nostalgic paean to communism?" "David MacFadyen reveals that Soiuzmul'tfil'm, upon reopening, continued doing what it had since its inception in 1936, when it was the only Russian studio able to take cartoons from sketchbook to the silver screen. In a historical and theoretical reassessment of animated cinema in Russia since World War Two, Yellow Crocodiles and Blue Oranges examines a large number of Soviet cartoons to decipher what about them allowed them to survive under communism and continue to survive with equal success under capitalism."--BOOK JACKET.




Princess Mononoke


Book Description

Princess Mononoke (1997) is one of anime's most important films. Hayao Miyazaki's epic fantasy broke domestic box office records when it came out in Japan, keeping pace with the success of Hollywood films like Titanic (1997). Princess Mononoke was also the first of Studio Ghibli's films to be distributed outside Japan as part of a new deal with Disney subsidiary Buena Vista International. Coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the release of the film, Rayna Denison curates this new collection to critically reflect on Princess Mononoke's significance within and beyond Japanese culture. The collection investigates the production, and re-production, processes involved in the making of Princess Mononoke into a global phenomenon and reevaluates the film's significance within a range of global markets, animation techniques, and cultures. In revisiting this undeniably important film, the collection sheds light on the tensions within anime and the cultural and social issues that Princess Mononoke explores, from environmental protection to globalization to the representation of marginalized groups. In this remarkable new collection, Princess Mononoke is examined as a key player during a major turning point in Japanese animation history.




The Queerness of Childhood


Book Description

This book represents a meeting of queer theorists and psychoanalysts around the figure of the child. Its intention is not only to interrogate the discursive work performed on, and by, the child in these fields, but also to provide a stage for examining how psychoanalysis and queer theory themselves interact, with the understanding that the meeting of these discourses is most generative around the queer time and sexualities of childhood. From the theoretical perspectives of queer theory, psychoanalysis, anthropology, and gender studies, the chapters explore cultural, aesthetic, and historical forms and phenomena that are aimed at, or are about, children, and that give expression to and make room for the queerness of childhood.




A Companion to Soviet Children's Literature and Film


Book Description

A Companion to Soviet Children’s Literature and Film offers a comprehensive and innovative analysis of Soviet literary and cinematic production for children. Its contributors contextualize and reevaluate Soviet children’s books, films, and animation and explore their contemporary re-appropriation by the Russian government, cultural practitioners, and educators. Celebrating the centennial of Soviet children’s literature and film, the Companion reviews the rich and dramatic history of the canon. It also provides an insight into the close ties between Soviet children’s culture and Avant-Garde aesthetics, investigates early pedagogical experiments of the Soviet state, documents the importance of translation in children’s literature of the 1920-80s, and traces the evolution of heroic, fantastic, historical, and absurdist Soviet narratives for children.




Animation: A World History


Book Description

A continuation of 1994’s groundbreaking Cartoons, Giannalberto Bendazzi’s Animation: A World History is the largest, deepest, most comprehensive text of its kind, based on the idea that animation is an art form that deserves its own place in scholarship. Bendazzi delves beyond just Disney, offering readers glimpses into the animation of Russia, Africa, Latin America, and other often-neglected areas and introducing over fifty previously undiscovered artists. Full of first-hand, never before investigated, and elsewhere unavailable information, Animation: A World History encompasses the history of animation production on every continent over the span of three centuries. Volume III catches you up to speed on the state of animation from 1991 to present. Although characterized by such trends as economic globalization, the expansion of television series, emerging markets in countries like China and India, and the consolidation of elitist auteur animation, the story of contemporary animation is still open to interpretation. With an abundance of first-hand research and topics ranging from Nickelodeon and Pixar to modern Estonian animation, this book is the most complete record of modern animation on the market and is essential reading for all serious students of animation history. Key Features: Over 200 high quality head shots and film stills to add visual reference to your research Detailed information on hundreds of never-before researched animators and films Coverage of animation from more than 90 countries and every major region of the world Chronological and geographical organization for quick access to the information you’re looking for




Fairy Tales in Contemporary American Culture


Book Description

In the twenty-first century, American culture is experiencing a profound shift toward pluralism and secularization. In Fairy Tales in Contemporary American Culture: How We Hate to Love Them, Kate Koppy argues that the increasing popularity and presence of fairy tales within American culture is both indicative of and contributing to this shift. By analyzing contemporary fairy tale texts as both new versions in a particular tale type and as wholly new fairy-tale pastiches, Koppy shows that fairy tales have become a key part of American secular scripture, a corpus of shared stories that work to maintain a sense of community among diverse audiences in the United States, as much as biblical scripture and associated texts used to.




Throw Your Voice


Book Description

Throw Your Voice is a story of loss and recovery. It relates how children placed in a temporary care institution make sense of their situations. Moving between a Kazakhstan government children's home, Hope House, and the Almaty State Puppet Theater, Meghanne Barker shows how children, and puppets, as proxies, bring to life ideologies of childhood and visions of a rosy future. Sites and stories run in parallel. Framed by the narrative of Anton Chekhov's "Kashtanka," about a lost dog taken in by a kind stranger, the author follows the story's staging at the puppet theater. At Hope House, children find themselves on a path similar to Kashtanka, dislodged from their first homes to reside in a second. The heart of this story is about living in displacement and about the fragile intimacies achieved amidst conditions of missing. Whether due to war, migration, or pandemic, people get separated from those closest to them. Throw Your Voice examines how strangers become familiar, and how objects mediate precarious ties. She shows how people use fantasy to mitigate loss.




Drawing the Iron Curtain


Book Description

In the American imagination, the Soviet Union was a drab cultural wasteland, a place where playful creative work and individualism was heavily regulated and censored. Yet despite state control, some cultural industries flourished in the Soviet era, including animation. Drawing the Iron Curtain tells the story of the golden age of Soviet animation and the Jewish artists who enabled it to thrive. Art historian Maya Balakirsky Katz reveals how the state-run animation studio Soyuzmultfilm brought together Jewish creative personnel from every corner of the Soviet Union and served as an unlikely haven for dissidents who were banned from working in other industries. Surveying a wide range of Soviet animation produced between 1919 and 1989, from cutting-edge art films like Tale of Tales to cartoons featuring “Soviet Mickey Mouse” Cheburashka, she finds that these works played a key role in articulating a cosmopolitan sensibility and a multicultural vision for the Soviet Union. Furthermore, she considers how Jewish filmmakers used animation to depict distinctive elements of their heritage and ethnic identity, whether producing films about the Holocaust or using fellow Jews as models for character drawings. Providing a copiously illustrated introduction to many of Soyuzmultfilm’s key artistic achievements, while revealing the tumultuous social and political conditions in which these films were produced, Drawing the Iron Curtain has something to offer animation fans and students of Cold War history alike.




A Companion to Russian Cinema


Book Description

A Companion to Russian Cinema provides an exhaustive and carefully organised guide to the cinema of pre-Revolutionary Russia, of the Soviet era, as well as post-Soviet Russian cinema, edited by one of the most established and knowledgeable scholars in Russian cinema studies. The most up-to-date and thorough coverage of Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet cinema, which also effectively fills gaps in the existing scholarship in the field This is the first volume on Russian cinema to explore specifically the history of movie theatres, studios, and educational institutions The editor is one of the most established and knowledgeable scholars in Russian cinema studies, and contributions come from leading experts in the field of Russian Studies, Film Studies and Visual Culture Chapters consider the arts of scriptwriting, sound, production design, costumes and cinematography Provides five portraits of key figures in Soviet and Russia film history, whose works have been somewhat neglected




Fëdor Khitruk


Book Description

This book is a first and long-awaited study of the directorial work of the animation master Fëdor Khitruk (1917–2012), an artist who formed in the tradition of classical cel animation only to break the conventions once he turned into a director; a liaison between artists and authorities; a personality who promoted daring films to be created in the Soviet Union dominated by socialist realism; and a teacher and supporter of young artists that continued to carry on his legacy long after the Soviet empire collapsed. Fëdor Khitruk: A Look at Soviet Animation through the Work of One Master reveals Khitruk’s mastery in the art of the moving image and his critical role as a director of films that changed the look of Soviet animation and its relation to the animation world within and beyond the Eastern Bloc. Based on archival research, personal interviews, published memoirs, and perceptive analyses of Khitruk’s production of films for children and adults, this study is a must-read for scholars in Soviet art and culture as well as readers fascinated by traditional animation art.