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Ladislas Starevich and Vlasov's Best Friend: a one of a kind event to close Anim'est
Saturday, October 15th, from 7 PM, the Closing Gala of the sixth edition of Anim’est International Animation Film Festival will bring Patria Cinema a show film and music lovers simply can’t miss out on: screenings of cult-short films from animation pioneer Ladislas Starevich, an absolute Romanian premiere, accompanied live by the Slovenian band Vlasov's Best Friend.
Resonant titles in the history of silent animation film, The Cameraman's Revenge (1912), Frogland (1922), The Voice of the Nightingale (1923), The Town Rat and the Country Rat (1926), will be screened as Anim’est officially closes, while, on the Patria Stage, the soundtrack will be provided by de Slovenian Quartet Vlasov's Best Friend, responsible for writing original scores for the legendary filmmaker.
One of the most important contributors to animation filmmaking history, Ladislas Starevich was born in 1882 in Kaunas (currently in Lithuania), in the Russian Empire, from Polish parents. In 1910, as director of the Natural History Museum in Kovno, Lithuania, he does several documentaries on the life of insects. Attracted to film and natural history, Starevich wanted to show moments from the existence of night insects as well. Unfortunately he had to face the problem of lighting: whenever he tried to set the lights in order to shoot them, the insects would go seeking darkness. So he used exhibited specimens from the museum on which he replaced the limbs with extremely thin wires, to enable dynamics and flexibility. This is how Lucanus Cervus (1910) was made, the first narrative puppet film, and the first picture show to mark the birth of Russian animation cinema. In 1991, Starevich was to move to Moscow, as a filmmaker at the first Russian film production company, owned by Aleksandr Khazhonkov. There, he was to make 24 films, most of which – animation films with insects which would make him famous on a national level and also abroad, as they traveled and brought him positive reviews, but most of all a decoration from the tsar himself. The Cameraman's Revenge (1912), a fable story about jealousy and envy in the insect world, is the best known and most appreciated title from Starevich’s Russian period. As he masters his technique, he creates more and more complex films, often mixing animation with action sequences. In 1913, the film Terrible Vengeance is awarded the Gold Medal at an international film festival in Milan, where 1005 film from all corners of the world are screened.
Once the First World War started (during which he made no less than 60 documentary features) then, the October Revolution, Starevich, as a supporter of the tsar, is forced to find refuge in Yalta, in Crimea, then in Italy and finally in Paris, where, along with other immigrants from the Russian filmmaking community, he start building a production company on what was left of the old studio of Georges Melies. This is also when the filmmaker takes on the name that would make him famous - Ladislas Starevich – an adaptation of the more exotic Polish name Władysław Starewicz. After his colleagues emigrate one by one for Hollywood and Berlin, the animator moves to the country side, in Fontenay-sous-Bois and starts producing puppet animation films on his own, with the help of his wife, France, and his daughter, Irina. The first film, Les Grenouilles qui demandent un roi / Frogland (1922), an adaptation of the fable by Esop about the frogs asking king Jupiter for a king, and are then unhappy with the „gift” they are given, is where Starevich gives the closest idea of a political stand point, expressing his distinctive preference for the constitutional monarchy, against the republican system France or the United States adopted.
Other well known films made by Starevich while in France are Voix du Rossignol / The Voice of the Nightingale (1923), a colorful short film made entirely by hand, with a guest appearance from the director’s oldest daughter „Nina Starr” (Janina Starevich), winner of the Hugo Riesenfeld medal for best Fiction Short Film released in 1925 in the United States. In Fontenay-sous-Bois Starevich produced over 20 animation short films, many of which where fables with a social or political subtext. The Town Rat and the Country Rat (1926), the forth film the Anim’est audience will get to watch in Bucharest, is one of the last silent short films signed by Starevich, the Russian pioneer who was among the first European filmmakers to experiment with the introduction of color and sound in their films. This is proven in Starevich’s first animation feature, Le Roman du Renard / The Tale of The Fox, produced between 1929 and 1931 in Paris, but released only in 1937 in Berlin, and in 1942 in Paris. Due to the delayed release, Starevich’s film couldn’t be considered the first sound animation feature in the world, while the films Peludópolis (dir. Quirino Cristiani, Argentina, 1931), and The New Gulliver (dir. Aleksandr Ptushko, A Vanichkin, USSR, 1935) had been distributed in cinemas first.
Ladislas Starevich died in 1965, while working on Comme chien et chat, the film that was to be left unfinished out of respect for the style and personality of the filmmaker. He was one of the very few European animators from up to the 60’s who got to be known across the Ocean and also one of the few who kept and reused, as secondary or minor characters, all the puppets he created, the oldest ones that are still being preserved, are actually the ones playing the frogs in Frogland. His films stand out through their dark humor and sharp irony, considering that particular period in Russia, with the use of insects. The Bug Trainer / Vabzdziu dresuotojas (dir. Linas Augutis, Rasa Mishkinyte, Marek Skrobecki, Donatas Ulvydas, Lithuania-Poland, 2008), the documentary co-production with Se-ma-for, Guest Studio at the sixth Anim’est edition, tells the story of the life and work of Ladislas Starevich for the first time, using restorations, archive footage, testimonials from people he knew, from contemporary artists or film critics from the entire world. A film that is bound to both captivate and touch film lovers, which can be viewed as part of the 2011 Anim’est program.
Vlasov's Best Friend is a Slovenian quartet made of Peter Kus (clarinet), Klemen Bračko (violin), Anže Palka (guitar) and Luka Jerončič (accordion). Created by Peter Kus, the quartet is linked through name and profile to the Pavel Vlasov Sextet, the ensemble founded by the composer at the end of the 90’s, which delivered the original score for masterpieces of the silent cinema like Mother (dir. Vsevolod Pudovkin, URSS, 1926) and Happiness (dir. A Medvedkin, URSS, 1934). Aside from composing for theatre plays, dance or puppet theatre, Peter Kus has also written a new soundtrack for the cult-documentary of the silent film age, Nanook of the North (dir. R. Flaherty, USA, 1922).