Russian Cartoons

After watching all these Russian cartoons in class today I felt a bit nostalgic towards the cartoons I had seen growing up in Russia.  And when I look back to the cartoons almost all of them have a twin cartoon in America; let me show some examples.

The first example is the Soviet’s version of Winnie Pooh.  Made off the original stories, there were three short films made by Sovuzmultfilm, which translates into, Union Animated Film.  The three films followed the chapters 1, 2, 4 and 6 of the book.  Interestingly enough the Russian Adaption of Winnie the Pooh varied from the Disney films, staying closer to the actual text of Milne’s work. 

The next example is a cartoon series called Nu, pogodi, which translates to “Well, Just You Wait”. It is about a wolf trying to eat a rabbit.  This cartoon can be closely related to the Tom and Jerry series we know and love, as the wolf always tries to eat the rabbit but never quite can.  These cartoons where made by the same company as before, Union Animated Film, and was created in 1969

A third example is called Buratino, Russia’s Pinocchio, and was first made into a novel by Aleksey Nikolayevich, in 1883. The story goes that Aleksey had read the story of Pinocchio as a child, but lost the book later on and just decided to retell it into a story of his own.  This story is beloved by all Russians. 

Even in more resent animated films, it is evident that there is influence from the American animated films.  For example an animated film Alyosha Papovich which seems to take some hints from Shrek, with an annoying talking horse in the movie and a big man as the main characters.  Although it is also very steeped in the old Russian tradition.

I feel like even though Russian may take from some of the American’s ideas, they make it fresh and steep it in their own tradition which helps distinguish itself from the American counterpart.