This one really surprised me.

About the only thing I wish had been done differently is the music in the introductory scene with the spirits tormenting the boy - that really should have been traditional percussive Japanese music.

Other than that, I think it's a little masterpiece.

I think I'm not really convinced by this film as a concept. Some interesting ideas in there, but... well, it's a pretty polemical poem and is about a pretty brutal, unforgiving time period. And those nuances are just kind of glossed over - but in the process, the victory of the pro-revolution "good guys" who are portrayed as gentle artists becomes unbelievable. Maybe it's just me.

Thanks for the thanks. :) I like those films as well. Although my favourite film by Karayev is probably The Lodgers of an Old House (though it's very close).

Yes, I had hoped that the site would also be useful for people studying the language. If you go to Browse>Films, you can filter the list of films to include only those that have Russian subtitles, and then switch back and forth between Russian and English as you watch.

And you can also sort the list of films by "Wordiness" depending on how dense you want the dialogue to be (I'm not entirely sure how useful that is, but it was possible to do and kind of neat, so I figured, why not?)

Thank you for posting this! I just discovered Russian animation as of late, and I've been getting myself back into studying Russian as a language, so having a site like this has been a big joy to me. This film, Welcome 1986, and The Painted Fox are already huge favorites of mine. Thank you and to every user here for all the work you do! <3

The puppets look nice, but I think both the characterization and the screenplay in this one are too cartoony for me - the characters just don't feel real.

I really like this one. And the whole concept of trying to reach the sun on foot is a great self-parody, one that many artistic people should recognize.

A children's cartoon, quite different from the director's more adult-oriented ones. Nothing wrong with the concept or animation, but it bugs me that he was quite obviously unaware of what noises the instruments make; the "trumpet" sounds like a valved trombone, the "English oboe" sounds like a muted trumpet, the "triangle" sounds like a suspended cymbal. Also, IMO the sounds are sometimes too obviously artificial.

My problem with this film is that the spider never did get anything to eat.

I think the art style is interesting, but the animation rather stiff. Also, I personally don't understand what's going on in this one. Hope someone else has better luck!

I spent some time fixing up the subtitles on this one. Still lots of room for improvement, but they should be basically accurate now.

It's a nice enough film, though not personally my favourite of either its era or of Ivanov-Vano's filmography. I feel there's a lack of real conflict, and the resolution seems to come too easy.