The Battle of Kerzhenets

The Battle of Kerzhenets
Title card
Directed by
Written byIvan Ivanov-Vano
Produced bySoyuzmultfilm
Music byRimsky-Korsakov
Release date
  • January 1, 1971 (1971-01-01) (USSR)
Running time
10 min 12 sec
CountryUSSR
LanguageRussian

The Battle of Kerzhenets (Russian: Се́ча при Ке́рженце; tr.: Secha pri Kerzhentse) is a 1971 Soviet animated film directed by Ivan Ivanov-Vano and Yuri Norstein. The film is set to music by Rimsky-Korsakov and uses Russian frescoes and paintings from the 14th–16th centuries. These are animated using 2-dimensional stop motion animation.

Plot

The story is based on the legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh (made into a 4-act opera by Rimsky-Korsakov in 1907), which disappears under the waters of a lake to escape an attack by the Mongols. (Russia was under the Mongol-Tartar yoke for a period of three centuries in the Middle Ages.)

The film itself follows the legend only loosely, however, and its highpoint is a battle between the Russian soldiers and the Mongol hordes, symbolizing a clash of cultures (the Virgin Mary appears early in the film, in effect watching over the Russian side of the battle).

Awards

Creators

Role Name
Directors Yuri Norstein (Юрий Норштейн)
Ivan Ivanov-Vano (Иван Иванов-Вано)
Writer Ivan Ivanov-Vano (Иван Иванов-Вано)
Art directors Marina Sokolova (Марина Соколова)
Arkadiy Tyurin (Аркадий Тюрин)
Animators Yuri Norstein (Юрий Норштейн)
Aleksandr Rozhkov (Александр Рожков)
Boris Saavin (Борис Савин)
Vyacheslav Shilobreyev (Вячеслав Шилобреев)
Camera operator Vladimir Saruhanov (Владимир Саруханов)
Composer Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov (Николай Андреевич Римский-Корсаков)
Sound operator Boris Filchikov (Борис Фильчиков)

See also


Stub icon

This article related to a short animated film is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.