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 ‘I am not “the same”, I am his son’ –these were the first words of Alexey Kotenotchkin, director, studio artist, animator and jury member of the eight Multimatograf festival.

In his master class, Kotenotchkin spoke about his father, the famous director of “Nu, Pagodi!” and one of the figures of the Soyuzmultifilm studio, and the caracteristics of cartoon’s production in the precomputer era. The modern technologies were evoked later on.

The public learnt that the largest animation studio in USSR was created in 1937, following a state decision. The idea was to create a soviet version of the American company “Walt Disney”.

Just after the war, Vyatsheslav Kotenotchkin was one of the five persons chosen among 500 others to work for Soyuzmultifilm.

 ‘When I was a kid, my Dad friends used to come to our house’ –said Alexey Kotenotchkin. ‘They were always discussing or drawing. And when they were drawing, it was always the strangest things. Once, one of them suddenly stand up and started jumping weirdly in front of a mirror. Later they explained me that she was drawing a goat and was therefore imitating its way of moving.

 ‘They knew each other so well’, and therefore ‘Nu Pagodi’ was a team’s work for many years.

In soviet time, making a 10 minutes long cartoon took approximately 9 months, so first shooting day was the start of long awaited holidays for drawers.

And what about special effects? Well, let’s just give you an example: the iridiscent glow of the cartoon  “Alenkyi Tsbetotchek” (“The Scarlet Flower”), was realized by piercing holes in the lamps illuminating the films..

About computer era animation, Alexey said ‘Everyone is doing movies these days. On Internet,  you can find so many thing. What I really liked in this festival was young people work, some are 20, 22…’