Of Russian children's dreams

So it's a new year and whilst this blog was primarily set up to function as the news/diary section of my website I have decided to also use it as a more conventional blog to post the things that interest me and albeit sometimes in a random way influence my work.
I have never been to Russia but have a good friend I have written to for a long time in Moscow. Recently we were talking about memory and how certain seemingly inconsequential things you have forgotten in your childhood suddenly come back to you, maybe even triggered by something as simple as a smell or a sound, and now these objects, whether a book or a TV show, seem to represent so much more - that they now somehow contain the memories that surrounded them - that they are the key to unlocking an atmosphere or a state of mind. I am in love with classic children's books for this very reason - for me it is always The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge that does it every time - the small door she crawls through to her magical bedroom, the giant dog she can ride which is probably a lion and her friend Robin who lives in caves and trees. My friend was kind enough to compile a youtube list of Russian cartoons that have this effect on her. Some are naive and dreamlike, others psychedelic and truly surreal. Here is one that I really enjoyed with singing creatures, a Tsarist castle complete with egg wielding monarch and a singer songwriting drifter:

The list got more and more surreal. In this country my generation often jokes how programmes like The Magic Roundabout were obviously made by people taking a lot of drugs, but this cartoon takes LSD animation to a whole other level...


I was lucky as a child as Dad ran the first British satellite TV channel for kids in the '80s and got sent lots of amazing cartoons from all round the world - many of which he bought and were shown for the first and sadly the last time in this country... My favourite was a Czech series about a little mole (I think how the makers were more concerned with telling the story rather than the constraints of conventional timekeeping, therefore making each episode a different length, could be why it didn't make it elsewhere). Watching it now it's extraordinary how beautiful it is and in a bizarre way restores your faith in humanity. This is a grand statement I know, but watch and see what you think...