GENTLE ANARCHY.

INTRODUCTION

Speak­ing of Czechoslo­vak, Pol­ish, and Sovi­et ani­ma­tion tends to trig­ger invol­un­tary images of Krteček, Lolek i Bolek, and Nu Pogo­di!, at least for the gen­er­a­tions who lived through the Cold War era. At this exhib­it, you are invit­ed to explore dif­fer­ent spheres of East­ern Euro­pean ani­mat­ed film. The focus is not on pro­duc­tion pri­mar­i­ly tar­get­ed at a children’s audi­ence or on films that in some ways pro­mot­ed the com­mu­nist ide­ol­o­gy, but on the so-called “avtorska­ia ani­mat­si­ia”, best trans­lat­ed as “inde­pen­dent” or “exper­i­men­tal animation”.

The twelve orig­i­nal posters pre­sent­ed here were designed by stu­dents at the Slav­ic Depart­ment of the Hum­boldt Uni­ver­si­ty in a sem­i­nar on East­ern Euro­pean Ani­mat­ed film. Through these posters, the stu­dents present some of the major film­mak­ers from the Pol­ish, Czechoslo­vak, and Sovi­et schools of ani­ma­tion and exam­ine the medi­um as a plat­form for social and polit­i­cal cri­tique. Each poster focus­es on a set of ani­mat­ed films that address a par­tic­u­lar socio-polit­i­cal issue. These include: com­mem­o­ra­tion of Holo­caust vic­tims through ani­ma­tion; Sec­ond World War events; repres­sion of artis­tic free­dom in a total­i­tar­i­an state; the neg­a­tive impact of tech­nol­o­gy on humans; urban­iza­tion as a process of dimin­ish­ing liv­ing space; the dis­so­lu­tion of the Sovi­et Union, and others.

The posters also dis­play a great vari­ety of pre-dig­i­tal ani­ma­tion tech­niques, rang­ing from clas­si­cal stop-motion and clay ani­ma­tion to exper­i­men­tal reverse-motion. These tech­niques link with equal­ly diverse gen­res such as ani­mat­ed doc­u­men­tary, social satire, car­i­ca­ture, par­o­dy, and polit­i­cal alle­go­ry, all unit­ed through the medium’s prone­ness to fig­u­ra­tive­ness, to short­cut and ellip­ti­cal con­struc­tions of meaning.

The open­ing of the exhib­it at the HU premis­es has been post­poned due to the out­break of the pan­dem­ic. Now, at last, we are proud to present the out­comes of the stu­dents’ enthu­si­as­tic work!

You are wel­come to enjoy the exhibit!

Click on a poster and watch the films linked alongside.

Dr. Jana Rogoff
Sem­i­nar Instructor

Ruben Höpp­n­er
Assis­tant Instructor

PARTICIPANTS

Daria Ma / Maria Tudos­es­cu / Izabela Babut / Mirko Engel / Nina Bell / Nora Noll
Olga Danilenko / Olga Rodi­ono­va / Morten Schnei­der / Begüm Bahadir / Tetiana Petrenko / Fan­ny Vincze

BIBLIOGRAPHY
(selection)

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Klimo­va, Olga (2013). Sovi­et Youth Films under Brezh­nev: Watch­ing between the Lines. Uni­ver­si­ty of Pittsburgh.
Krzosek-Holody, Mag­dale­na (2019). “City. Mass. Machine. Urban Dystopia and the Nos­tal­gia for Nature in Pol­ish Ani­mat­ed Film of the Post-War Era.” In Pro­pa­gan­da, Ide­ol­o­gy, Ani­ma­tion. Twist­ed Dreams of His­to­ry. Edit­ed by Olga Bobrows­ka, Michał Bobrows­ki and Bogusław Zmudzin­s­ki. Krakow: Wydawnict­wa AGH, 106–117.
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Pikkov, Ülo (2016). “On the Top­ics and Style of Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Films.” Baltic Screen Media Review 4, 17–37.
Pikkov, Ülo (2017). “On the Links between Car­i­ca­tures and Ani­mat­ed Films in Com­mu­nist East­ern Europe.” Baltic Screen Media Review 5, 29–41.
Pon­tieri, Lau­ra (2012). “Case Stud­ies. The Ear­ly 1960s.” Sovi­et Ani­ma­tion and the Thaw of the 1960s. New Bar­net: John Libbey.
Rogoff, Jana (2019). “But­ter­flies Do Not Live Here (1958). Doc­u­men­tary on the Holo­caust at the Bor­ders with Ani­ma­tion.” Con­fer­ence paper, Lis­bon, Soci­ety of Ani­ma­tion Studies.
San­domirska­ja, Iri­na (2015). “Aesopi­an lan­guage. The Pol­i­tics and Poet­ics of Nam­ing the Unnam­able.” In The Ver­nac­u­lars of Com­mu­nism. Lan­guage, ide­ol­o­gy and pow­er in the Sovi­et Union and East­ern Europe. Lon­don and New York: Rout­ledge, 63–88.
Walden, Vic­to­ria Grace (2018). “Ani­ma­tion and Mem­o­ry.” In The Ani­ma­tion Stud­ies Read­er. Edit­ed by Nichola Dob­son, Annabelle Honess Roe, Amy Ratelle and Car­o­line Rud­dell. Ani­ma­tion Stud­ies Read­er: Blooms­bury, 81–90.
Zmudz­ińs­ki, Bogusław (2019). “Jan Švankma­jer against Ide­ol­o­gy and Pro­pa­gan­da.”  In Pro­pa­gan­da, Ide­ol­o­gy, Ani­ma­tion. Twist­ed Dreams of His­to­ry. Edit­ed by Olga Bobrows­ka, Michał Bobrows­ki and Bogusław Zmudz­ińs­ki. Krakow: Wydawnict­wa AGH, 145–152.