"Ready or Not, Here I Come" (literal title, "I Go Seek") was directed in 1992 by the mysterious Vlad Fesenko. The actual story of how the film got made is a bit unclear; in the film itself, only the logo of Moscow's Pilot animation studio appears, while animator.ru says that it was made by Uzbekfilm and the Cinema Technologies Group. My guess about ( Read more... )

Director Sergey Merinov wrote in his LiveJournal on July 3rd that Pilot, Russia's oldest private animation studio (see Wikipedia article) will be closing in one week, one of many Russian animation studio casualties recently. If this happens, it will be the end of an era; it was largely Pilot that set the standard for Russian animation after the ( Read more... )

Another Russian Sherlock Holmes parody? Sort-of, but by another name ( Read more... )

"Rubik's Cube" is a collection of three short films from Ecran Studio in 1985. The text in the beginning suggests that this was meant to become an ongoing project, but this was the only one that was ever completed. However, the idea is very similar to the five "Lift" films that were made by Pilot Studio at the end of the 1980s. In fact, I was ( Read more... )

This article originally appeared in OG.ru on Feb. 6, 2009. I translated it because people in the know say that it is a pretty good summation of what's been happening over the past while. Almost all animated projects have been shut down, including some very worthy ones, such as Pilot Studio's feature film Mad Hair and their "Mountain of Gems" series ( Read more... )

Previously:
Our Masha in the Strawberry Country (Dec. 18, 2008)
The New Adventures of Alyonushka and Yeryoma (Dec. 25, 2008)
The Tale of Fedot the Strelets (Jan. 1, 2009) (Dec. 18, 2008)
Ivan Tsarevich and Grey Wolf (Feb. 1, 2009)
Alice's Birthday (Feb. 19, 2009)
Star Dogs: Belka and Strelka (Dec. 31, 2009)
Alien Pile (likely 2009)
A Room and a ( Read more... )

Pilot Studio, the Soviet Union's first private animation studio, was founded by Aleksandr Tatarskiy and Igor Kovalyov 20 years ago. Tatarskiy led the studio through some very difficult times, keeping it alive and thriving at great cost to his own health, until his death last summer (see here), while Kovalyov moved to America in the early 1990s and ( Read more... )

Tatarskiy is almost unknown in the English-language world. For a glimpse at how much he meant to a certain country, here's an article translated from animator.ruAleksandr Mikhaylovich Tatarskiy was buried at Miusskoye Cemetery in Moscow ( Read more... )

UPDATED 2021-06-06 (replacing some dead video links)


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