Zagreb 29/2002 Hrvatski filmski - HFS

approach to the archetypal heroes of the sheriff, teacher and
cowboy. Although once the best witnesses of the myth of the
Western Frontier, in the Post-Western their role has radically
changed, primarily due to the changes in the social context.
More precisely, the primal community has evolved into an
organized society that no longer needed their services. Relations
between the past and present, myth and reality continue
to be an important element of the Post-Western just as
they were of the Western, although their interrelations have
changed.
CHRONICLE’S INTERVIEW
Midhat »Ajan« Ajanovic
Yuri Norstein: Animation Is as Genuine
as a Dream, An Interview
UDC: 791.44.071.1 Norstein, J.(047.53)
791.43-252(47-57)
Yuri Norstein is perhaps the most respected contemporary
animator in the world. Many critics, fellow animators and
experts in the field of animation consider his film Tale of Tales,
made in 1979, as the greatest animated film of all time.
His previous films, The Heron and the Crane (1974) or Hedgehog
in the Fog (1975) have also won many prizes at some
highly acclaimed festivals of animation.
He has achieved this international acclaim thanks to his extraordinary
way of using cut-out and a multiplane rostrum
camera as well as to his mastery in creating delicate atmospheric
modulation made by the use of very few colours and
nuances. A dense concentration of visual events and symbols
in each film frame, a skilful simulation of the effects of lighting,
mist and night view and an exceptional imaginative
way of story telling are just a few additional components on
which Norstein built his poetic universe. Of the same importance
is the content of his films, composed as they are of
eastern spiritual heritage, Russian fairy-tails, oriental philosophy
and European positivism and, as he put it, dreams
survived from childhood.
He was born in 1941 in Andreevka, a small village near
Moscow where his Byelorussian family had found refuge
from the war. After several different jobs, among others he
worked as a manual worker in a furniture factory, he joined
the Sojuzmultifilm where he worked as an in-betweener, artistic
director and animator in a number of films until he finally
made his debut as director (together with A. Turin) on
The 25th: The First day, a film about the October Revolution
made in avant-garde manner. His big break came when
he started working with the legendary Russian animator
Ivan Vano Ivanov on whose animated feature The Left-Handed
he worked as the artistic director. Together with Vano
he co-directed The Battle of Kerzhents (1970), an ambitious
project, based on a Russian fresco painting, which was the
winner of the first Zagreb Festival in 1972. That was his
first international success. In the following nine years he
made three more films, which have definitively established
210
Hrvat. film. ljeto, Zagreb / god 7 (2001), br. 29, str. 209 do 219 Abstracts
him as one of the greatest authors in the history of animated
films.
In the interview by our contributor Midhat Ajanovic, Norstein
speaks about Sergej Eisenstein and how he influenced
his interest in filmmaking. He describes his beginnings in Sojuzmultifilm
and his relationship with Ivan Vano Ivanov.
Special attention is given to his life project, the animated feature
based on Gogols story The Overcoat that he has been
working on for almost 35 years. Norstein depicts in detail
the way in which he has made all his films and explains his
perception of visual story telling, computer animation and
other phenomena connected with animation in the present
time.
He perceives animation as a realistic media or as he put it:
»a media as genuine as a dream«.
The text is accompanied by Norstein’s filmography.
CINEMA POLICY: MARKETING,
PRODUCTION MENAGEMENT
Damir Primorac
Marketing in Film Distribution
UDC: 791.44.075
Although it has always been present on the market, art has
attracted surprisingly little attention where economic theoreticians
are concerned, with the exception of the elite performing
and visual arts. However, today, economists and artists
have to acknowledge the fact that the past and the future
of civilisation rely on the intertwinement of marketing
and culture and thus strive to cooperate allowing for their
respective differences. Marketing, a relatively young scientific
discipline might be of great help to their efforts. In the
fifty years of its existence marketing has spread over many
complex and diverse fields. Particularities of the most delicate
field — art, film included, have been neglected so that
there is great need for specialisation and modification of this
branch of marketing. Development of a theoretical system
that would allow creation of effective marketing strategies
applicable in culture, art, and cinema in particular, would
help improve the devastating state in which imaginativeness
is today.
The most obvious example of the unavoidability of the connection
between artists and economists is the most complex
art form — film. Its organisational, technological and financial
demands have conditioned its market orientation. In
film production representatives of both worlds and worldviews
coexist, although often forcibly, according to specific
rules coined in practice. More than any other art form film
is a social phenomenon, partly due to its technological and
artistic demands, partly due to its influence on society. Marketing
is one of its constituting components and coordinates
the interests of filmmakers with those of the society on the
whole. Improving communication between all the inputs
and the participants of the exchange, marketing can fill the
H R V A T S K I F I L M S K I L J E T O P I S 29/2002.