The film known as Падал прошлогодний снег is a cult classic of Russian animation made in 1983 by Aleksandr Tatarskiy. It became very popular soon after its release, and was also critically successful; it was Tatarskiy's first to be accepted into an international film festival, where it won a medal (Varna '83; for more about that story, read the " ( Read more... )

The 15th Open Russian Festival of Animated Film took place a month ago. This is the main yearly event for Russian animation, a place where (in theory) ALL animated production from the country is gathered into one place for professional critique ( Read more... )

The Russian traditions for this time of year differ somewhat from the Western ones. Santa Claus is called Father Frost (Ded Moroz), he has a daughter but not a wife, and he comes on New Year's Eve instead of Christmas Eve. He also traditionally would use a troika of horses instead of reindeer. But other than that, there are many similarities, and ( Read more... )