Russian animation is on an upswing, with enthusiastic audiences and generous government allocations. A record-breaking 44 cartoons will compete at the upcoming festival, to last a total ten hours, organizers proudly announced.
The whole movie world finds cartoons, especially full-length films and television serials, an extremely lucrative business. Their popularity has been steadily mounting for several years. Now, Russia has joined the process, as we can judge by the Suzdal program.
The 10th open festival will show two full-lengths made last year-"The Nutcracker" and "Alyosha the Priest's Son and Tugarin the Dragon". No decision has been made yet on another full-length, "Dunno and Barrabass". Will it appear?
"Alyosha" is a great moneymaker. Its box-office returns for the first Christmastide week far exceeded all foreign-made cartoons on show in Russia at the time, says Armen Medvedev, president of the Rolan Bykov Foundation, which promotes children's cinema.
Also on Suzdal show will be the start of an ambitious project-the opening eleven episodes of the serial, "A Mountain of Precious Stones".
Based on tales of Russia's many ethnic entities, the 52 episode TV serial has brought together this country's top-notch cartoonists, each producing an episode. Celebrities are through with the job. These are Alexander Tatarsky, Valentin Telegin, Mikhail Aldashin, Konstantin Bronzit-the maker of "Alyosha", Natalia Berezova, Elena Chernova and Andrei Kuznetsov. The latter three have an impressive number of awards to their name.
