Notebook

Russian animator wins Oscar

Unique art style brings realism to the really big screen

R

ussian director Alexan-der Petrov won the Oscar for Best Short Film—Animated, for his direction of Ernest Heming-way’s, Old Man and the Sea. 

To create the film, Petrov, a native of Yaroslavl, painted an amazing 29,000 original frames, in oil paint on glass—a very slow production process, but one which created stunning results. It took Petrov two-and-a-half years to complete the paintings. The quality required of the paintings was particularly deman-ding: they were used to create an IMAX film, where the screen is 80 feet high.

The film was produced by Pascal Blais, Inc. Ogden Enter-tainment, of Canada and is the first animated feature in the IMAX format. The firm had to create highly precise animation technology to bring the work to the extra large IMAX screens. Over $3 million was spent on the film’s creation.

In 1987, at the age of 30, Petrov completed his courses at the Higher Director School. His first animated film, “The Cow” (based on a story by Andrei Platonov) was nominated for an Oscar. His film “The Mermaid” was also nominated for an Oscar.

Petrov has a penchant for literature and serious themes. His film,  “Dream of a Ridiculous Man” was inspired Fyodor Dostoevsky’s story of the same name. 

“It is all the more agreeable that his works enjoy success with Americans, whose cartoons grew  from totally different traditions,” Kom-mer-sant film critic Pakhom Alexeev wrote, after The Old Man and the Sea clinched the Oscar. 

Petrov has created an animation film studio in Yaroslavl, called Panorama. His pupils regularly receive prizes at the Russian animation festival, Golden Fish. He said he hopes the fame from this award will help the studio gain world renown and develop a new generation of artists in Russia.

This is the first time a Russian has won an Oscar for animation work.

To find out if the film is coming to an IMAX theater near you, visit the website: www.oldmansea.com.

Pugachov rides again

Russian film director Alexander Proshkin has made a film based on Alexander Pushkin’s novel, “The Captain’s Daughter,” which recounts aspects of the Pugachov revolt of 1773-1775. The film is called Russky Bunt (“Russian Revolt”) and stars actor Vladimir Mashkov (above) as Yemelyan Pugachov. Mashkov also starred in the Oscar nominated film, The Thief (now available in the US on video). Russky Bunt was shot in Russia’s Orenburg region, one of the many locations where Pugachov’s revolt took hold. In fact, many local residents—some ovf which were extras in the film—are descendants of the peasants who supported Pugachov. Russky Bunt is receiving critical acclaim in Russia, yet it did not win any awards at the recent Berlin International Festival. 

FINAL TALLY

According to the official results published by Russia’s Central Electoral Commission, 75,181,071 Russians voted in the March 26 presidential elections. Of these, 52.94%, or almost 40 million, voted for Vladimir Putin. Communist Part candidate Gennady Zyuganov polled second with just under 22 million votes (29.17%). Out of the 12 candidates, just 6 received more than 1 million votes; “None of the above” came in sixth place, with 1.4 mn votes.

BETTER LATE ...

The Zvezda (“Star”) service module of the future Inter-national Space Station will be launched on July 12 after a two-year delay, the Russian Space Agency announ-ced. The date was decided during a Moscow meeting of project leaders from the US, European and Russian space agencies. Zvezda, originally scheduled for liftoff in April 1998, should dock with the other orbiting modules of the space station on July 22. 

OPERA TOUR SET

The new version of Sergei Pro-kofiev’s opera, War and Peace, was staged at St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Thea-ter. The opera is dedicated to Russia’s victory over Napo-leon in the War of 1812 and is being well received. “The Mariin-sky orchestra headed by Valery Gergiev is simply admi-rable, making any compliment insufficient. Such an emotional thrust can make the globe spin faster in honor of Russia and its music,” a Noviye Izvestia critic wrote. The opera will go on a world tour this year, with a first stop at London’s Covent Garden. Later, it will travel to La Scala in Italy and the Metropolitan in the US. 

Conductor Gergiev and filmmaker Andron Konchalovsky collaborated on the opera. Prok-ofiev’s original work was cut significantly: two of the 13 scenes were re-moved entirely. Still, the opera lasts four hours with just one intermission. Gergiev and Koncha-lovsky have also sought to diminish Prokofiev’s focus on “the people” and heighten love scenes.

GREEN RESERVE

Russians hold some $17 bn in foreign currency, according to Goskomstat. Yet they are hiding less of it mattresses and putting more in the bank. Kommersant daily reported that Russians increased the amount of money they have in hard currency accounts from 75.6 bn rubles ($2.7) on January 1 of this year to 115.7 bn rubles on February 1. At the same time, Russians are spending slightly less to buy foreign currency: 7% of their income in February 2000, vs. 7.4% in February 1999. 

BISTRO VS. MCD’S

Moscow City authorities opened yet another Russkoye Bistro (RB) outle—this one near the metro Tyoply Stan. RB is the largest fast food chain in the Russian capital, with 37 outlets—even more than McDon-ald’s. Yet, according to Kom-mer-sant, RB lags far behind McDonald’s in other respects. Each RB averages just 350-400 customers per day, vs. 10,000-15,000 for the Golden Arches. In an effort to invigorate RB, Moscow city authorities (one of the company’s major shareholders) recently acquired full ownership in RB, hoping to attract further outside investment. Obser-vers say that it is mainly RB’s slow service that keeps it from competing seriously with Mc-Donald’s for clients.

MINTING RUPEES 

The Moscow Coin Factory will start producing five-rupee coins for the Indian government. It is the first time a Russian company has minted money for another state, and is the result of Norilsk Nickel winning a tender for the project, floated by India.

DID YOU HEAR ...

Moscow State University’s Socio-logy faculty recently analyzed 6,916 jokes, focusing on their social meaning. Some 46.9% were related to the family, of which half were about wives. Only 17% of the jokes poked fun at bad husbands. The tyoshcha (mother-in-law) was the overwhelming brunt of most jokes. 

ACCOLADES

A new Russian Prize called the Russian National Olympus was awarded to the most famous Russians of the 20th century earlier this spring. Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov (who participated in the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz I flight) was named “National Hero of the Heart;” ice hockey goalie Vladislav Tretyak was named “Man-Legend;” ballerina Maya Pliset-skaya won the title “Superstar.” Mikhail Gorba-chev received the title “Man of the Epoch.”

POLARIZING

A film dramatizing the life of the legendary Russia pilot Valery Chkalov (see Russian Life, Dec/Jan 1999) will be made by US cinema producer Warren Wideman, ITAR-TASS news agency informed. Wide-man held a press conference held at Pearson field, near Vancouver, where Soviet pilots Chkalov, Baydukov and Belyakov landed on June 20, 1937, after making the first successful transpolar flight. According to Wideman, “the project is still at a very earlier stage.” 

Taller SISTERS

Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov attended the groundbreaking ceremony of Moscow’s first new skyscraper, on Davydkov-skaya street. Under the ambitions “New Moscow Ring” program, sixty 35-45 story buildings will be constructed over the next 15 years. The first eight of Luzhkov’s vysotkas (as skyscrapers are called in Russian) will go up between now and 2003. The new buildings will have office space, exclusive housing and trade outlets. Currently, Mos-cow’s tallest buildings are the “seven sisters” constructed in the Stalin era.

HIS TURN NOW

Boris Yeltsin became a pensioner on April 5, 2000. His pension is 11,250 per month ($340). Yet Yeltsin hardly need worry about surviving on this. By a decree of Acting President Putin, Yeltsin will receive 75% of his former salary as president.

ivory bonanza

Moscow customs officers donated 400 kg of confiscated elephant tusks to the Orthodox Church, Kommersant daily reported. The ivory will reportedly be used to decorate Christ the Savior Cathe-dral. 

Customs officers seized the African elephant tusks in April 1999, at Moscow’s Sheremetevo-2 airport. It was hidden in fifty suitcases belonging to the North Korean diplomatic mission, Kom-mer--sant reported. The diplomats were carrying the tusks from Nigeria and made a transit stopover in Moscow. 

Under the 1961 Vienna Con-vention, diplomatic immunity doesnot apply if there are serious grounds for suspecting contraband. At total 538 kilograms of ivory were confiscated. 100 kg was also given to the Grabar restoration center and 38 kg to St. Petersburg’s Peterhof Museum. 

BEYOND THE RING

A new metro station, Rosso-shanskaya, will be opened in Moscow this year. The station will be on the south end of the gray line, which eventually will stretch beyond Moscow’s outer Ring Road (known as MKAD), connecting to the South and North Butovo residential districts.

Fast Lab

A Russian company has converted a supersonic Tupolev-144 passenger plane (also known in the West as Concordsky) into a flying laboratory for aviation research. According to a Reuters report, Alexander Pukhov, chief designer of the converted aircraft, said the Tupolev design bureau was in talks with potential clients from the US, France, Britain, Germany and Japan. 

good news

The US and Russia finally opened a Chemical Weapons Destruction Lab in Moscow in April. Reuters estimated the cost of the facility at over $18 mn. Within the next two years, the facility will help Russia destroy an agreed-upon 8000 tones of chemical weapons.

“A lot may come to pass. If we don’t do anything.”

Ex-premier Viktor Chernomyrdin (Izvestia) 

“We will not ask the plumber Ivanov where he got the money to buy his Zhiguli car.”

Russian Tax Minister Alexander Pochinok, explaining that his ministry is incapable of establishing total control over all large expenditures. (Kommersant) 

“Gennady Zyuganov is a fading figure. And the sooner this figure disappears from our political 

landscape, the better.”

Anatoly Chubais, on the political fate of Communist 

Party leader Gennady Zyuganov (ORT 1st channel)

“It’s OK to show the opera to the English, 

but not to the French.”

Advice reportedly offered by British Premier Tony Blair, after seeing Sergei Prokofiev’s opera, War and Peace, at the Mariinsky Theater, with Acting Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Kommersant) 

“The whole difference between the American and Russian establishment is simple: the US prosecutor investigates the sexual life of his president, but in Russia, the president investigates the sexual life of his prosecutor [the dismissed Yuri Skuratov].” 

Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky (Novaya Gazeta)

The wonder of Palekh miniatures 

The art form has weathered 75 years of political change

P

alekh lacquer miniatures celebrated their 75th anniversary this year with an exhibition at Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery.

Palekh, in Ivanovo region, was a center for iconography starting in  the 18th century. But after the revolution Palekh painters were jobless—the Bol-she-vik regime’s atheism quashed demand for icons. The idea of lacquer boxes was born. The craft quickly became popular at home and abroad, bringing the Soviet state healthy profits.

A classic Palekh miniature is inspired by Russian fairy tales, old customs and rites. Artists from Palekh have also taken themes from works of classic Russian literature, especially Pushkin and Gogol. Starting from the late 1940s, Paleshans—as Palekh artists are called in Russian—also had to portray more contemporary socialist subjects, such as “Komsomol Wedding,” “Protection of The Crop by Pioneers” or the “Liberation of the Woman.” Today, young artists choose both classic and contemporary themes for their work. Some lacquer miniatures feature the paintings of avant-garde painter Vasily Kandinsky. 

Some 500 craftsmen work in Palekh today. Every tenth resident of the town is an artist. But with success comes cheap imitations. Buyers can only  avoid these by knowing the art form in detail, or by buying Palekh only at “firmenny” (corporate) stores.

60% of Russians said they are “believers.” 26.9 % said they are non-believers. 4,4% said they are staunch atheists. (ROMIR polling agency) ! 60,000 private mansions were built in the Moscow region in the past 8 years. During the same period, 665,000 individual houses (mainly dachas) were built. While in 1993 the average dacha was 103 m2, by 1998 the average was 121 m2. (Goskomstat) ! 10% of Russians account for 32.7% of the country’s income. The 10% of the population that is worst off receives only 2.4% of all income. 3.6 % of Russians earned less than R400 ($13.90) a month in 1999, down from 19% of the population in 1998. 11.4% made between R600-800 (vs. 17.2% of the population in 1998). 24.0% of Russians earned over R2000 ($70) per month in 1999 (in 1998, just 7.5% had salaries this high). ! DHL controls 51% of the Russian express delivery market. TNT has 19%, UPS has 10%, and Fedex 7%. ! A recent poll asked Russians what “PR” (public relations) is. 54.8% did not hazard a guess. Only 12% gave the right answer. 12.9% guessed it was the name of foreign firm. 10.7% thought it was a synonym for propaganda. 5% said it was some part of computer and 2.3% said it was mobster jargon. 1.1% of those polled said it is the same as prostitution. (ROMIR Polling Agency) ! Russian Tax authorities received tax returns from almost 900,000 citizens between Jan. 1 and March 14. The Tax Ministry expects 4 mn such returns. (Taxpayers must file returns if they have to pay taxes from more than one source of income.) ! 85.7% of Russians said they believe only strong and severe powers are capable of bringing some order into Russia. (Independent Research Center ROMIR) ! Unemployment declined 12.3% from  February 1999 to February 2000. Some 9.12 million Russians are currently unemployed. (Goskomstat) ! CIS states owe Russia $1.5 bn in state credits. (Novaya Gazeta).  ! Monthly capital drain from Russia is $1 bn. In 1999 total capital drain was $15 bn (down from $25 bn in 1998). Some of the drained capital may be making its way back to Russia in the form of “foreign” investments. Cyprus, which has a very beneficial tax treaty with Russia, was the source of some $3.2 bn of investments in Russia through October 1 of last year. Yet Cyprian direct investment worldwide hardly ever exceeds $15 mn a year. ! The average Russian pension may exceed R800 (still less than $40) by the end of 2000, said chairman of the Russian Pension Fund, Mikhail Zurabov. By mid-2001, the average pension should reach R1000-R1100. ! Direct foreign investment in Russia was $4.3 bn in 1999, up 27% vs. 1998. (Economics Ministry)  ! Russia earned $3 bn from arms exports in 1999. (Interfax) ! In January of this year, there were 195,500 deaths and 93,900 births in Russia. This is 600 fewer births and 19,300 more deaths than in January of 1999. (Goskomstat)

Unexpected Results

Strange outcomes at World Ice Skating competition

T

he World Ice Skating Championships in Nice in early April were the source of several surprises.

To begin with, defending pairs champions Anton Sikharulidze and Yelena Berezhnaya were disqualified when Berezhnaya failed a drug test, saying later that it was due to cough syrup she took to cure a cold. 

Yet Russia still held on to the gold in pairs skating: Maria Petrova and Alexan-der Tikhonov defeated their Chinese rivals, Su Czen and Honbo Czao, making this Russia’s 30th world title in pairs ice skating competitions.

Alexei Yagudin also defied conventional wisdom—that teammate Yevgeny Plyu-schenko would take the gold—and became the first Russian to win three consecutive world titles. Plyu-schenko tanked his free program and only came in fourth.

Finally, in the women’s singles competition, conventional wisdom had it that Irina Slutskaya or Maria Butyrskaya would walk away with the gold. But American Michelle Kwan upset both front runners. Slutskaya took the silver and defending champion Butyrskaya took the bronze. 

But the biggest surprise awaited Russia in ice dancing—a discipline Russia has dominated since the mid-1970s. With world champions Anzhelika Krylova and Oleg Ovsyannikov sidelined due to Krylova’s injuries, hopes were focused on Irina Lobacheva and Ilya Averbukh. Yet their performance did not measure up and Russian athletes did not even medal.

Solo sportsman

Bringing up the rear in the Iditarod

F

yodor Konyukhov, 48, a professional traveler, honorary Master of Sport, yacht captain, and member of the Russian Union of Artists, completed his most recent competition in late March: the Alaskan Iditarod dogsled race. Finishing last of 68 finishers (81 began the race), Konyu-khov covered the 1150 miles in 15 days and 5 hours, having broken three sleds, dropped three dogs and losing 33 pounds.

Konyukhov trained for the race for just three-and-a-half months and local observers put his odds of finishing at just 1 in 10. His last place finish was actually “negotiated” with American Dave Tresino. Traditionally, the last place finisher is awarded a red lantern. Konyukhov and Tresino agreed at the last stop before the finish that Konyukhov would come in last and get the lantern; Tresino will get one of Konyukhov’s paintings.

Among other adventures, Konyukhov was the first Russian to ski solo to both the North and South Poles, has climbed the highest peaks on all seven continents and is an accomplished sailor. He took part in last year’s “Around Alone” race, a solo sailing race around the globe. He was picked as one of only 20 sailors who will be allowed to participate in the solo circumnavigation race “Vendee Globe 2000.” The race starts on November 5.

On June 4, legendary Russian hockey coach Viktor Tikhonov turns 70. Head coach of the Soviet national team from 1977 to 1992, he led the team to scores of victories, the most memorable being the 1979 Challenge Cup in Canada and Olympic Gold in 1988 and 1992. Most famous Russian NHL stars—e.g. Vyacheslav Fetisov, Sergei Fedorov and Igor Larionov and Pavel Bure—were coached by Tikhonov. Above: After the 1992 victory, Tikhonov was also awarded a gold medal—usually only given to players. 1972 Olympic gold medalist in the biathlon, Alexander Tikhonov (left), congratulates the coaches of the Russian Olympic Team, Viktor Tikhonov (center) and his associate, the late Igor Dmitriev (right). (Photo: V. Zufarov).