During the Armenian retrospective at the ReAnimania International Animation Film and Comics Art Festival from 7-14 November, a series of animation shorts were screened under the title ‘Animation Without Rules — A Territory of Freedom: Armenian Animation 1970s–1990s’.
Animation at that time was the Soviet censors’ blind spot. The animation department in Yerevan, established in 1967, was staffed by young professionals and enjoyed more creative freedom than the fiction and documentary departments allowing the artists to take on social, political, and cultural issues with unusual freedom. This also allowed female animators to appear in the field and to realise their ideas, which is why almost half of the directors in this retrospective are women.
Read on to see what OC Media thought of seven of these short animated classics.
The Giant Who Dreamed of Playing the Violin (1986)
Still from film. Photo via Kinodaran.
★★★☆☆
Directed by Ella Avagyan, this nine-minute short tells the story of a kind-hearted giant who is mesmerised by the sound of his human neighbour playing the violin. He longs to learn the instrument himself, but runs into a very relatable truth: many people enjoy music, few can play it, and mastering it takes a great deal of time.
Set against fairy-tale-like natural scenes, the film follows the growing friendship between the giant and the human, who tries to find an instrument that suits him and teach him to play. In the end, however, the giant gives up the attempt and simply enjoys listening to the music again, together with the surrounding blooming nature.
Echo (1986)
Still from film. Photo via Kinodaran.
★★★★☆
Directed by Lyudmila Sahakyants, Echo is based on a tale by the renowned Armenian writer Hovhannes Tumanyan. His works, popular with children, were a common source of inspiration for animators in the late Soviet period.
The story follows a peasant attempting to sell his cow at the local market. On his way, the peasant ends up in conversation with an echo in an empty ruin. The comedy comes from the wordplay that occurs when the echo repeats the last word of each sentence the peasant says, which he takes as a form of agreement. For example, the peasant says, ‘Would you like to buy?’, referring to the cow. ‘Buy, buy’, replies the echo.
Because of this misunderstanding, the naive peasant sells his cow, leaving it tied to a tree. When another passer-by just takes the cow, and he is left with nothing, the peasant then stumbles on a bowl of gold in the same tree he tied the cow to. Through dynamic montage and sound play, the film turns this comic situation into a clever twist. Misfortune is immediately repaid by luck, leaving us to wonder whether what we believe is real.
Happy End (1978)
Still from film. Photo via Kinodaran.
★★★☆☆
Directed by Gayane Martirosyan, this is a cheerful alternative interpretation of another Tumanyan tale, The End of Evil. The original has a much more tragic plot: a mother cuckoo is forced to give up two of her children to an evil, manipulative fox, who threatens to kill them all. Before giving up the last one, a crow comes to the rescue, killing the fox and helping the cuckoo keep her last child.
In this version, the fox is a classical music teacher living in an apartment complex alongside a mother cuckoo and her three children. Annoyed by the noise they make, the fox goes upstairs and threatens to take the children away. The exhausted mother gladly agrees. After a few days of being driven crazy by hyperactive cuckoo children, the fox is desperate to give them back. Eventually, he befriends the children, and they all play music together.
The premise is a familiar story, but the ending is happier, and the tone is far more playful, with lively music, colour, and animation style.
Parvana (1970)
Still from film. Photo via IMDb.
★★★★☆
Parvana, directed by Valentin Podpomogov, is a melancholic, ethereal story about a princess who refuses to marry anyone except the man who can bring her an inextinguishable fire. The years pass, and the brave men who set out to win her heart through fights and competitions never return from the impossible mission. The princess is so heartbroken that she turns into a stone statue, and her tears flood the city of Parvana and its people.
The film portrays a magical world of diverse characters, capturing youth, love, disappointment, and longing through slow-burn shots and dynamic scenes of horse fights, hunts, and contests of every kind. The princess’s large brown eyes capture all the sadness she feels.
Unlike the literary version of the tale, in this short a knight does eventually bring the fire to the princess, though she has already turned to stone. Perhaps this ending can be read as a way of offering hope for the eternal love the inextinguishable fire represents.
The Meeting of the Mice (1978)
Still from film. Photo via Kinodaran.
★★★★★
The second film in the collection directed by Lyudmila Sahakyants is also another successful adaptation of a classic piece of Armenian literature.
This genuinely funny, chaotic story focuses on a group of mice who call an urgent meeting because a cat has appeared in their midst, and someone, somehow, must hang a bell on it so they can hear it coming.
The film is portrayed in shades of grey, and a number of famous Armenian actors voice the mice, giving the film an iconic atmosphere. The animation also goes deeper than its initial premise might suggest, showing how communities and the public usually fail to act at the crucial moment: everyone has something to say, but when it comes to action, everyone finds a way to pass the responsibility on. The adaptation plays this up for comedy. At one point, the mouse singled out for the task protests: ‘If I hang the bell, who will give speeches?’.
The Axe (1994)
Still from film. Photo via MUBI.
★★★★☆
Throughout the retrospective, the films grew progressively more political and critical of society.
In The Axe, directed by Robert Sahakyants, a simple point is made: when an innovation reaches the public, and nobody knows how to handle it, it becomes a disaster for that same society. It is surely a familiar story now, in an era of rapidly developing AI.
In this take, a community of men is on the verge of freezing in a snowy, stark landscape, huddled around a dying fire, unable to fetch more wood from the forest nearby. Then a stranger hands them an axe and leaves. Not knowing how to use it and handling it without care, the men end up killing each other. But instead of blaming their ignorance, they blame the axe and decide to burn it.
The Button (1989)
Still from film. Photo via Kinodaran.
4.5/5★
The Button, also directed by Robert Sahakyants, shows the Soviet Union crumbling by the minute. It follows a Soviet clerk (chinovnik) who, whenever he presses a button — whether on an alarm, an elevator or a telephone — causes an explosion somewhere. Yet he barely cares about the suffering of others and hurries to his mistress’s home.
The film’s heavy criticism of the Soviet political system, and of officials’ detachment from ordinary people, grows into a story about the Armenian independence movement and the history of its resistance. While the explosions continue without a blink of an eye, we hear the trumpet playing a famous melody associated with the independence movement. We see protesters in Freedom Square in Yerevan, with endless explosions apparently meant to silence the people. Dark, gloomy, but sarcastic and full of irony, the animation does everything to capture the reality of its time, the anxieties about nuclear weapons, the arrogance of politicians, the rage of ordinary people, and the non-existent state.
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