Soviet animation.

March 2, 2005 8:14 AM

Soviet Animation On the heels of the post on Soviet music, here's a link to 10 short video clips of well-known Soviet-era cartoons. (Set your browsers to cyrillic KOI8-R encoding.)
posted by gregb1007 (21 comments total)

Elaborated description: On the heels of the post on Soviet music, here's a link to 10 short video clips of well-known Soviet-era cartoons. Under a minute in length, they won't convey plot or storyline. But they will give the viewer a sense for the visual and musical style of Soviet animation. Warning: Too many viewings from Mefi users may overload the server and result in the clips being taken off-line. (Set your browsers to Cyrillic KOI8-R encoding)
posted by gregb1007 at 8:18 AM on March 2, 2005

In Soviet Russia, Cartoon animates you!
posted by indiebass at 8:18 AM on March 2, 2005

By the way, if anybody gets confused by the Russian text and doesn't know what to do, it's simple: Just click on the green links to watch the cartoons.
posted by gregb1007 at 8:34 AM on March 2, 2005

Lovely! That's a cute monkey in the first one ...
posted by carter at 8:36 AM on March 2, 2005

thanks for this... the second link is a clip from the russian version of winnie the pooh.

but oh, the page colors! my eyes, they bleed.
posted by acid freaking on the kitty at 8:37 AM on March 2, 2005

sweet, i recently found this site yahoo video searching for cheburashka but i didnt notice the other cartoon links...
any info on how to set / what the encoding does?

now does anyone have any other international retro cartoon links?
posted by GleepGlop at 9:43 AM on March 2, 2005

Why do they all leave you hanging?

"Dats enofv for you!! Ve must ration de entertainment so dar is enofv for everyvon!!"
posted by Balisong at 10:21 AM on March 2, 2005

Oooh, Cheburashka! or "Drutten" as we call her in Sweden.
posted by mr.marx at 10:57 AM on March 2, 2005

I'm still hoping for another episode of Worker & Parasite
posted by antron at 11:14 AM on March 2, 2005

I'm still hoping for another episode of Worker & Parasite

The original episode of Eastern Europe's favorite animated cat and mouse team. Endut! Hoch Hech!
posted by SenshiNeko at 11:24 AM on March 2, 2005

I found all those cartoons horribly depressing, like that Simpsons parody Worker & Parasite wasn't far off.
posted by bobo123 at 11:40 AM on March 2, 2005

To echo, Mr.marx, Cheburashka! If I didn't see him/her on the list, I was going to link to it. More Cheburashka here, with music, although I couldn't find any of the video links that I usually flip out over. Crocodile Gena happens to be my favorite.
posted by Plinko at 12:23 PM on March 2, 2005

bobo, don't think they're all depressive. the animation is primitive compared to American, but its also quirky and eccentric, kinda like the style in Simpsons.
posted by gregb1007 at 1:56 PM on March 2, 2005

i found a cheburashka DVD in tokyo a few years back, and it led me to this awesome japanese site with cheburashka icons, wallpaper, etc. and it's got the opening riff to the birthday song on perma-repeat, which lodges it 6 inches deep into your skull. you'll never get it out.

pust' begoot ne-ukluzhe / peshekhodi po-luzham / a voda po-asfaltu rekoi....
posted by acid freaking on the kitty at 3:18 PM on March 2, 2005

I found all those cartoons horribly depressing, like that Simpsons parody Worker & Parasite wasn't far off.

No need to be depressed - I (and my sisters) grew up both with these cartoons and with equivalent American ones, and many of the Russian cartoon are actually quite good. The Russian "Alice in Wonderland," for example, I find rather weak compared to the Disney version; but the Russian "Winnie the Pooh" is so much better than the Disney version that the latter is, for me, essentially unwatchable by comparison. Hell - I'm not sure I can think of a better children's animation than ?????-???.

By the way: all of these cartoons (and many more) are widely imported (in editions legal and otherwise) by the Russian-speaking community. If you want to find videotapes of Cheburashka and others, going to Tokyo is decidely optional.
posted by kickingtheground at 3:38 PM on March 2, 2005

[Damnit - the (copy-n-pasted) Russian worked on preview. That was just Winnie the Pooh, again.

Also, I'll note that 38 Parakeets (the title of one of the cartoons) is actually a reference to the fundamental arbitrariness of units of measure (the python character, wanting to know how long he is, is measured as 38 parrots in length') – surely one of the more sophisticated mathematical concepts in children's animation that I've seen.]
posted by kickingtheground at 3:44 PM on March 2, 2005

dang, i knew i should have thought of a better reason to visit tokyo. :)

i used to also see some of these cartoons torrented on kinozal.com, which has since moved to a torrentbits forum thingy with registration.
posted by acid freaking on the kitty at 4:13 PM on March 2, 2005

Hell yeah... the Russian Pooh kicks your loser Disney Pooh's cowardly yellow ass.

Anyone seen the claymation Krasnaya Shapochka?
posted by Krrrlson at 6:26 PM on March 2, 2005

Excellent, gregb1007!
You don't need a dictionary to appreciate what a smooth-tongued devil this cat is.
posted by madamjujujive at 8:39 PM on March 2, 2005

Right you are, madam. I forget who Leopold the cat is talking to, it's either mice or birds. He is saying: Guys, c'mon let's live together as friends. Very creepy, but so damn cute.

I found all those cartoons horribly depressing...

It's probably just the colors in these reproductions. Some of the post Communist stuff is very depressing indeed, but Soviet animation wasn't serious, heavy handed or moralizing, and the animation was top notch.
posted by gesamtkunstwerk at 11:39 PM on March 2, 2005

Right you are, madam. I forget who Leopold the cat is talking to, it's either mice or birds. He is saying: Guys, c'mon let's live together as friends. Very creepy, but so damn cute.

The cat was talking to a pair of mice, who would try to torment him as he lived his goody-two-shoes existance. On a deeper level, I suppose there could be creepiness there, but, on a superficial level, I remember him as being purely benevolent. He was one of those good guys who foiled the bad guys' plot against him entirely by accident, while going through his day being friendly, kind, and blissfully unaware.

(Or, at least, so I remember it.)
posted by kickingtheground at 11:45 PM on March 2, 2005