Body and soul
There once lived a fox and a hare. Fox had a house made of ice and Hare had a house made of wood... And a snowy forest surrounds the hare’s free screaming while the fox is happy thinking his ice palace is fantastic. The artist's hand can create caresses of an eternal permanence and Yuriy Borisovich Norshteyn is a master caressing stories and spectators at the same time, uniting us in the realm of suggestion. His movies are soul to the artistic experience.
He was born in 1941 near Moscow during a full evacuation of the city because of the war. Then, he lived difficult circumstances that undoubtedly influenced his love for delicacy. He studied at an art school, he worked in factories, studied animation and collaborated on a fifty films until he directed his first job, Day 25, the first day (1968), sharing the direction role with Arkadii Tyurin and using some Soviet revolutionary artists works to commemorate the October Revolution. He continued working in the co-direction in films like The Battle of Kerzhents (1971), where he used medieval frescoes to recreate the resistance against the Tartars.
He is always perfecting his technique of animation based on the use of plate glass in order to create a dreamy atmosphere. The stories always go to a magical dimension that makes them unique despite their traditional origin. A story in the hands of Norshteyn comes alive and has special dimensions. Its skies are born from his particular imaginary world always creating new universes from the popular culture. Probably is the most certain manifestation that illusion is typical of childhood but not exclusive to it. People often have no enthusiasm for life over the years but Norshteyn paints his stories with a fascination for existence. Every detail is important and he feels illusion but also creates it.
Works like The Fox and the Hare (1973), The heron and the crane (1974) and Hedgehog in the Fog (1975), show all his sensitivity always well accompanied by Meyerovich Mikhail’s music and Viktor Khokhryakov as an off voice. They all won the admiration of the film world even in the days when the Iron Curtain had not yet fallen. Their colours, mosaics and landscapes have an own world of intense and evocative feelings, and take us to a place where our imagination seems to fly freely. Everything is possible in Norshteyn films, even tenderness. Then his most famous work arrived, The Tale of Tales (1979), a marvel that lives up the title itself.
After awards on both sides of the wall, he was fired in mid-eighties because he was working on his new project too slowly. His craftsmanship wasn’t going with the times, but his works survives as the most brilliant one now. Then he was working in what is his latest film project called The coat, for which funding has not succeeded yet. Now he is dedicated to the dissemination and teaching as well as the publication of books like his recent exquisite illustrations Snow on the Grass (2005), extensive work that I hope will be helpful in order to finish his unfinished project. Yuriy Norshteyn is the tale in body and soul.
Text by Juan Carlos Romero
Video by Yuriy Norshteyn
Photo by Nikita Pavlov