How the plasticine cartoons of Alexander Tatarsky were born, and for which he almost went to jail

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The cartoon "Plasticine Crow" at one time became a real breakthrough in animation, and its creator, Alexander Tatarsky, was promoted to the rank of innovator in animation. Animation was his vocation and the meaning of life, he went to it in a rather difficult way, overcoming difficulties and obstacles. It is hard to imagine that the creator of such masterpieces as "Last year's snow was falling" and "The investigation is being led by koloboks" could go to jail even at the time when he was just starting his career in animation.

From dream to dream

He was born in Kiev, and his childhood, thanks to his father, who created reprises for famous clowns, passed in a creative atmosphere. Father Mikhail Semyonovich dreamed that Alexander would also be related to the circus. But the boy dreamed of playing football. The house where the Tatarsky family lived was located just opposite the Dynamo stadium, and all the boys in the district saw themselves as football players in the future.

Sasha Tatarsky and his friends played on an impromptu playground in front of the stadium entrance. They were not afraid of the asphalt pavement, and turnstiles played the role of gates. In one game, his right arm was broken, and the fourth grader had four surgeries to collect the joint. Then, for a long time, Alexander had to develop his right hand with the help of table tennis, but he learned to masterfully draw with his left. He continued to play, stood at the goal and hit the balls with a plaster cast. When my father saw this, he was simply horrified.

At the same time, the boy was grouped so as to fall exclusively on his left side. They were ready to enroll him in the legendary school "Dynamo", but the revealed congenital heart disease became an obstacle on the way to Tatarsky's dream.

Once Yuri Nikulin, who met Tatarsky Jr., told his father that Sasha is the same clown as he is, only small. Alexander, in fact, loved practical jokes all his life, but he invented such amazing characters that it would simply not be possible for a living person to play them. At the request of his father, he worked in a circus as a uniformist, after graduating from the Kiev Institute of Theater and Cinema, and later on animation courses at the State Committee for Cinematography of the Ukrainian SSR.

Back in 1968, he got a job at Kievnauchfilm, where there was an animation department. He began his career by "expropriating" several sheets of tracing paper from colleagues' tables, intending to draw his own underground cinema on them. Later he realized that he lacked knowledge, experience and, as it seemed to him then, talent, and Alexander Tatarsky postponed this idea for later.

And then, during a patronage trip to one of the collective farms for potatoes, Alexander Tatarsky met and made friends with Igor Kovalev, a talented animator, with whom they began to shoot their underground animated film.

On the way to the goal

Returning to Kiev, the friends built a kind of cartoon machine from the wreckage of a metal bed and an X-ray machine acquired on the occasion of a decommissioned one. During the day, they, as expected, worked at "Kievnauchfilm", and at night they created their own cinema, having acquired a workshop. True, they often had to change their place of deployment because of the visits of representatives of the authorities, who saw suspicious personalities in the animators. First of all, the security officials were interested in the question of whether it is possible to reproduce leaflets on their miracle machine.

At the same time, the comrades were very disorganized, so the work was often slowed down. Nevertheless, having finished their first cartoon, they went with him to Moscow to show the masterpiece at the Higher Directing Courses. True, it was in the summer, they did not find anyone on the spot and returned to Kiev.

The director of "Kievnauchfilm", having learned that two young employees secretly created their own cartoon, was offended. And he wrote a denunciation on them to the authorities. The young talents organized a small party, and the leader passed her off as a violation of public order with an abundance of alcohol and even violence against a woman. A criminal case was opened against Tatarsky and Kovalev, but the police quickly figured out what had happened, the case was closed, advising the comrades to behave a little quieter.

Plasticine worlds

They immediately went to Moscow again. They managed to show the cartoon in the courses, but as a result, only Kovalev was enrolled in them. Alexander Tatarsky could not get a job on television and was in the gloomiest frame of mind when fate brought him together with Eduard Uspensky, who at that time worked as artistic directors from the Multtelefilm studio. They became friends, and it was Uspensky who became the ideological inspirer of The Plasticine Crow.

Once Eduard Nikolaevich in the Ostankino canteen thrust a crumpled piece of paper into Tatarsky's hands with different thoughts and a bunch of corrections, throwing away that it was for him. As a result of a long study of the records, the script for "Plasticine Crow" was born. True, the finished cartoon was immediately accused of lack of ideology and put on a distant shelf. Eldar Ryazanov decided to show it in his "Kinopanorama", after which the triumphal procession of the cartoon began. Alexander Tatarsky was called an innovator in animation, and his plasticine masterpiece has earned 25 awards at various festivals.

Later, Alexander Tatarsky created many more cartoon masterpieces. At the same time, the most meaningless, in his opinion, but also the most beloved was the cartoon "Last year's snow was falling." He drew his inspiration from the most common everyday situations, memorized interesting phrases and words spoken by someone, and then put them into the mouths of his heroes.

He created his own unique cartoons for himself. For that child who lived in it. Therefore, each of them had a soul, they had incredibly vivid images and characters. He was able to create his own, the country's first non-state animation studio "Pilot" and helped restore the Church of the Three Saints for the right to be in the premises of the church.

When most of Pilot's employees received an invitation to work in the United States and left, Tatarsky stayed, although he was also called overseas. He was able to revive his "Pilot" even after such a heavy personnel loss. And on the 20th anniversary of the studio in 2007, all those who could call themselves Tatarsky's students gathered in Moscow.

They recalled how they created their first masterpieces, raised their glasses to the further prosperity of "Pilot" and, as usual, wanted to meet more often, invited each other to visit and insisted on the arrival of Alexander Tatarsky in America. Just to see how his comrades work. No one could have imagined that two days later, Alexander Tatarsky would be gone.

He died in his sleep on July 22, 2007. The same congenital heart disease, diagnosed once upon entering the football school "Dynamo", overtook him at the age of 57.

The cartoon by Alexander Tatarsky about a foolish peasant who went into the forest in search of a Christmas tree has been an indispensable attribute of the New Year holidays for 35 years. Today it is difficult to imagine why in the 1980s. Tatarsky's humor was not just not appreciated, but did not even want to release the cartoon on screens. After accusations of Russophobia and mockery of the Soviet people, the author found himself in a pre-infarction state …