71. Yuri Norstein, animator

You know how sometimes you discover something so wonderful, you wonder how or why it's been withheld from your consciousness, your understanding of the world, for so long? So many fabulous people, activities, creations, etc. etc. out there, of course you can't bump into them all, or even a tiny fraction of them. But/and, oh how lovely to have your world thus enlarged at least every so often.

That happened to me today as I read an essay in the book I'm currently tackling, Brian Phillips's Impossible Owls (the title alone enlarges my world), which I will report on anon. The essay in question is titled "The Little Gray Wolf Will Come," and it concerns a Russian animator named Yuri Norstein, considered by some to be the greatest animator in the world. His output is relatively small, just a handful of short films. Phillips became interested in him when he encountered a reference to a project Norstein had been working on, about the great Gogol short story "The Overcoat," for thirty-seven years. And that was as of 2013. 

I just want to keep him alive in my consciousness, so I'll post a few videos and links. 

First, what he engages in here is astonishing cut-out animation, which he accomplishes together with his wife, Francheska Yarbusova. It is briefly described in this introduction to his corpus:

Here is his 1975 film Hedgehog in the Fog (Ёжик в тумане). (In addition to the visuals, I love listening to the Russian narration.) It's quite possible that the first word I ever learned in Russian—besides da, nyet, dosvidanya, and (thank you, Clockwork Orange) kharasho—was yozhik, or hedgehog. That from David, who took Russian in high school, and they'd throw a little stuffed hedgehog around the room to tag the next one up to read or respond to the assignment. And who doesn't love a yozhik?

Then, Tale of Tales (Сказка сказок) from 1979, about "the way memory is conjured up." (The version here is fairly low-res, but it has English subtitles. For a high-res rendering, go here.)

A few years ago, the Atrocity Guide posted a short film about Norstein and Yarbusova's "Overcoat" project (Шинель), titled The Animators Who've Spent Forty Years on a Single Film:

And here are 5 minutes of clips from the project. As one commentator notes, it takes 200 hours to animate 12 seconds. So far, he's finished about 25 minutes of what might end up being an hour-long project. That is dedication. Obsession. Genius or madness, or both.

You can read an interview with Norstein from 2020. In 2021 the Moscow Times commemorated his 80th birthday. And here is a 2005 article from the Washington Post about The Overcoat. He was also featured in a 2005 book by Clare Kitson, former head of animation at BBC 4.

I've just now stumbled on this creator. But from the bits I've seen so far, I would have to agree that Yuri Norstein is one hell of an animator. And he seems to have a beautiful heart and soul as well.