May 1, 1917
Born in Tver Fedor Khitruk — creator of cartoons for children and adults. Director of "Winnie the Pooh," "Boniface's Vacation," and many others. A legend of Russian animation.
Animation is the shortest distance between thought and image.
I became interested in drawing as a child: I could spend hours tearing newspapers into small pieces and assembling mosaics from them.
At the age of 14, he moved with his parents to Stuttgart, where his father purchased machine tools for Soviet industry. He also graduated from the art and crafts school there.
I decided to become a cartoonist at the age of 18, when I watched the films Walt Disney.
A cascade of stunts, unbridled imagination, a harmonious fusion of sound and image, and most importantly—the absolute authenticity of the scene! I left the theater amazed and confused. It was the sheer inexplicability of what I saw that struck me most—who could have done such a thing?
I only managed to get a job at Soyuzmultfilm two years later, after a string of rejections. I managed to work on several films. Then the war began.
He served as a translator at the headquarters of the 3rd Ukrainian Front and commanded a radio intercept platoon in the 17th Air Army. He celebrated victory in Vienna. After the war, he spent two more years as a military translator in Berlin.
Returning to Moscow, he served as a leading animator at Soyuzmultfilm for a long time. He contributed to the creation of around 200 animated films, including "The Scarlet Flower," "The Snow Queen," "Kashtanka," and "The Adventures of Buratino."
He made his directorial debut only at the age of 46, with "The Story of a Crime." This adult cartoon, which satirized the quality of Khrushchev-era apartment buildings, won several international awards and pioneered a new style for Soviet animation: lightness and dynamism.
Well, yes, I'm a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, and I made "Boniface's Vacation." That's perfectly understandable. After the war, people wanted a simple, funny story.
He gave viewers a multi-story about Winnie the Pooh, a philosopher bear with ironclad logic.
He died in 2012, at the age of 96.
