Igor Kovalyov

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Global Tantrum is Klasky-Csupo's adult division, now online.

I've often mentioned Igor as an inspiration and friend. Here are some of his short films:


Hen, His Wife

Andrei Svislotsky


Bird in the Window


Flying Nansen


Drew Neumann's Eye Spy CD:

http://www.store.yahoo.com/one/eyespy.html


http://www.globaltantrum.com/front.html

Peter Chung, Wednesday, 3 May 2006 11:09 (seventeen years ago) link

One of my favorite shows in the good ol' late 90s was Duckman, and seeing it still listed on Klasky/Csupo makes me optimistic about its return (at least, in DVD form).

skyknyt, Wednesday, 3 May 2006 23:22 (seventeen years ago) link

Wow, you know that guy.
They used to play "Flying Nansen" on cable late at night here in the SF Bay Area. I really tripped out on that one, with the strange egg scenarios.
Was that an influence on the more surreal aspects of Aeon?
Oddly enough I found myself wondering who had made that not so long ago, and whether I would ever see it again.

Very cool!

What are the dates of those films?
Does he intentionaly make them look aged like that, or are they actually old?

Chas, Thursday, 4 May 2006 01:28 (seventeen years ago) link

http://www.klaskycsupo.com/data/igor.html

I first saw Hen, His Wife in 1990, while I was working on the AF pilot. I already had thought to do the LTV shorts without dialogue, but seeing Igor's film was tremendously inspiring.


His latest film, Milch, is being hailed as his "masterpiece".

http://store.awn.com/product.php?productid=17073

He tells me there are plans to put out a DVD of his earlier films. They really need to be seen in better versions than the tiny, compressed video files linked above. The grainy film look is intentional.

Peter Chung, Thursday, 4 May 2006 09:01 (seventeen years ago) link

I'd definately buy it

ChristopherMichael (The Rictus), Saturday, 6 May 2006 11:43 (seventeen years ago) link

eight years pass...

Man, I wish I could see these in better quality videos. These are brilliant works that really deserve something like a BluRay release.

My interpretation of Hen, His Wife: The wife is clearly a hen and the husband is (somewhat?) aware of this, but sees nothing wrong with it. It's only when the other man starts pointing this out as being wrong or somehow undesirable that the husband comes to think that he doesn't want others to view him in the same way as they view his wife. So, he forces her to leave despite how good she is to him. When he realizes how incapable he is of living alone, the husband calls for his wife to return. But now the wife sees the man as he truly is, something she was blind to until she left him alone for a time.

I'm no animation or movie buff, but I got this feeling while watching Kovalyov's films that I've always associated with Soviet artistic expression. Some animators, like Kovalyov, bring these images with them from their home countries and manage to show off their particular aesthetic and sensibilities in American commercial works like Ah Real Monsters and Rugrats, the stuff Kovalyov did for Nickelodeon. I could be wrong, since I really haven't put any serious thought or study into what dictates "Soviet art" but I get this feeling of soft ennui (perhaps not the right word) from them. It's especially apparent for me in Milch. In comparison, American animation is vibrant, energetic, comedic and fun. They are expressions of joy. It's interesting to compare and contrast the cultural aesthetics and styles of these two countries, especially because of the Cold War, and I believe that their cultural differences are quite apparent in their animated works.

Man From the Machine, Thursday, 18 December 2014 05:42 (nine years ago) link


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