Russian Animation Classic "The Snow Queen" on Special Exhibit

In case you didn't know, there was an animated film made in Russia 55 years ago of Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen. It won awards from all over the world and still has animators and layout artists discussing it today.

 From Haute Living:

Currently on exhibit until Feb. 5 at the Na Solyanke Gallery in Moscow is the “Cold and Beauty: The Snow Queen is 55.”  The exhibit features the work of modern world-renowned artists and animators, the airing of “The Snow Queen” and the original sketches by Alexander Vinokurov to the 1957 Russian award-winning animated film.

The exhibit honors the 1957 Soviet animated film “The Snow Queen” directed by Lev Atamanov -the film is based off of the story with the same name by Hans Christian Andersen- after its release, the film won numerous awards around the world.  It was incredibly popular in the Soviet Union and kids to this day still watch the “Snow Queen.”

To mark the success and impact of Atamanov’s animated rendition of the “Snow Queen,” Na Soyanke Gallery featured works from many artists who created pieces themed after the dreamlike tale.  Some of the pieces include David Birkin’s frozen video portraits of famous Russian athletes and celebrities.  Other artists involved in the exhibit were Andrei Bartenev, Khaik Simonyan and Katya Bochavar.

Although there was no way the curator of the exhibit could have known Disney would revive it's Snow Queen project yet again just recently, the timing for such an exhibit is excellent. If this was showing after Disney's Snow Queen (titled Frozen) started releasing teasers and marketing, I don't think as many people would be as interested. At the very beginning of Frozen is a completely different matter, so I hope it gets the attention it deserves.

 Interested in seeing more stills? Go HERE and enjoy. (Note: there are actually 2 more posts "Snow Queen 2" and "Snow Queen 3" of stills and layouts from the same film at this blog.)

Speaking of Frozen in case there was any question whether or not Disney's revived fairy tale project was to be hand drawn or CG it's definitely CG. And 3D. Sigh. (Note: I did have confirmation of this in my announcement post HERE but a lot of people must have skimmed that little tidbit in the excitement of seeing Snow Queen thawing at Disney once again - not that I blame them!) The current release date for Frozen is a 2013 Winter release on November 23.