Andrej Chržanovskij
Biography
Andrei Khrzhanovsky was born on the 30th of November, 1939 in Moscow. After graduation from film-making at the VGIK State Film Institute (1962) he started to work at the Soyuzmultfilm Studio. From 1982 he had taught animation in courses of scenography and film-making, in 1992 he co-founded the school-studio ´SHAR´. After his debut There Lived Kozyavin (1966) he ranked among the most important makers od animation film, reflecting theme of existence in connection with cultural phenomenons. Although prospects looked good for Khrzhanovsky 's films, one of his early works The Glass Harmonica (1968) was censored and obstructed for twenty years. Although the studio had the reputation of affording a degree of self expression unknown to live-action filmmakers, Khrzhanovsky must have been sufficiently unconventional for the police to step into action wherever he was. With his singular personality, he continued to make non-conventional films at regular intervals over a thrity-year period.
Illustration Features
For Khrzhanovsky is literature, especially the works of Pushkin, a great source of inspiration. It provides the basis for a non-directive approach which pays little heed to the doctrine of socialist realism and the univocal attitude that prevails in mass produced filmmaking. He used a common principle in the cycle of short films on Pushkin that he subsequently joined together in a whole: an immense biography full of documents, drawings, non-fiction, poems and poet´s correspondence. Khrzhanovsky´s feature The School of Fine Arts (1987-1990) is another perfect illustration of his subjective approach ; successive touches here and there and the polymorphic creation of a character. In it Khrzhanovsky animated drawings by unofficial Estonian painter Ulo Sooster, also a friend of Tarkovsky.