Childhood and early life Yuri Norstein was born to a
Jewish family in the village of
Andreyevka (in present-day
Pachelmsky District,
Penza Oblast) during his parents'
World War II evacuation. He grew up in the
Maryina Roshcha District of
Moscow. After studying at an art school, Norstein initially found work at a furniture factory. Then he finished a two-year animation course and found employment at studio
Soyuzmultfilm in 1961. The first film that he participated in as an animator was
Who Said "Meow"? (1962). '' (1975), one of Norstein's most widely known works
Film career After working as an animation artist in some fifty films, Norstein got the chance to direct his own. In 1968, he debuted with
25th October, the First Day, sharing
directorial credit with Arkadiy Tyurin. The film used the artwork of 1920s-era Soviet artists
Nathan Altman and
Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. The next film in which he had a major role was
The Battle of Kerzhenets (1971), a co-production with
Russian animation director
Ivan Ivanov-Vano under whose direction Norstein had earlier worked on 1969's
Times of the Year. Throughout the 1970s Norstein continued to work as an animator in many films, and also directed several. As the decade progressed his animation style became ever more sophisticated, looking less like flat cut-outs and more like smoothly-moving paintings or sophisticated pencil sketches. His most famous film is
Tale of Tales, a non-linear, autobiographical film about growing up in the postwar Soviet world. Norstein uses a special technique in his
animation, involving multiple glass planes to give his animation a
three-dimensional look. The camera is placed at the top looking down on a series of glass planes about a meter deep (one every 25–30 cm). The individual glass planes can move horizontally as well as toward and away from the camera (to give the effect of a character moving closer or further away). For many years, he has collaborated with his wife, the artist
Francheska Yarbusova, and the cinematographer Aleksandr Zhukovskiy. He met Francheska when he was studying at the Moscow Art School. She became his most loyal collaborator. Together they created the famous
Hedgehog in the Fog (1975) and
Tale of Tales.
Tale of Tales was voted the best animated film of all time at the Animated Olympics, held during the 1984
Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, Norstein's animations were showered with both state and international awards. Then, in a bitter twist of irony, he was fired from
Soyuzmultfilm in 1985 for working too slowly on his latest film, a (presumably)
feature-length adaptation of
Gogol's
The Overcoat. By that time he had been working on it with his usual small team of three people for two years and had finished ten minutes. In April 1993, Norstein and three other leading animators (
Fyodor Khitruk,
Andrei Khrzhanovsky, and
Eduard Nazarov) founded the Animation School and Studio (SHAR Studio) in Russia. The Russian Cinema Committee is among the share-holders of the studio. To this day, Norstein is still working on
The Overcoat – his ardent perfectionism has earned him the nickname "The Golden Snail". The project has met numerous financial troubles and false starts, but Norstein has said that it currently has reliable funding from several sources, both from within and outside of Russia. At least 25 minutes have been completed to date. A couple of short, low-resolution clips have been made available to the public. The first 20 minutes of the film have also toured among various exhibits of Norstein's work in Russian museums. The full film is expected to be 65 minutes long.
Books Norstein wrote an essay for a book by
Giannalberto Bendazzi about the
pinscreen animator Alexander Alexeïeff titled
Alexeïeff: Itinerary of a Master. In 2005, he released a Russian-language book titled
Snow on the Grass. Fragments of a Book. Lectures about the Art of Animation, featuring a number of lectures that he gave about the art of animation. That same year, he was invited as "guest animator" to work on
Kihachirō Kawamoto's puppet-animated feature film,
The Book of the Dead. On 10 August 2008, the full version of the book
Snow on the Grass was released (the "incomplete" 2005 book was 248 pages). The book, which was printed in the Czech Republic and funded by
Sberbank, consists of two volumes, 620 pages, and 1700 color illustrations. The studio stopped working on
The Overcoat for nearly a year while Norstein worked to release the book. == Political views ==