‘Superior to Disney’: colour animation at Lenfilm, 1936-41

This article examines the phenomenon of colour-film animation at Lenfilm during the period 1936–1941. It discusses the development of colour technologies at the studio during the 1930s and the ways in which its artists responded to the aesthetic challenge of colour. Three of the seven short films produced during this period have been selected as case studies; they are examined here in the context of filmed animations in the Soviet Union during the 1930s, in particular the debates prompted by the screening of three Disney animations in Technicolor at the Moscow International Film Festival in 1935. The formal analysis of the case studies is based on the digital restorations in recent years at the Russian State Film Archive (Gosfilmfond), but also the inspection of one nitrate-positive of Mstislav Pashchenko’s Dzhiabzha (1939), which has survived intact at the archive. The technical difficulties posed by the hydrotype process developed at Lenfilm, as well as the challenge of producing sufficient prints for mass distribution, also form part of the discussion