If there are programs on the domestic TV screen to which the term “cult” is applicable, then “Good night, kids” certainly refers to them.

The program "Good night, kids" on screens since 1964

It so happened that in our country "cult" programs are also the most "long-suffering". They had to go through so many changes in economic models, whims of spectator habits, that their essence is lost in the stream of changes. And what kind of traditions can we talk about if the program has been on screens since 1964? However, the main thing is still possible to catch.

Screensaver 1971. The broadcasting time changed, and after it the hands of the drawn clock "let down"

If a real artist gets down to business, then, believe me, he will see and embody the very essence of the idea in his work. And so it happened with the intro to the program "Good night, kids", which was drawn by the cartoonist Yuri Norshtein.

The splash screen was created by Alexander Tatarsky and Yuri Norshtein

But, alas, few had a chance to see her. After being on the air for three years, she disappeared from the screens "at the request of the audience." The author of "Hedgehog in the Fog" and "Tale of Fairy Tales" did not reach the mass TV audience.

The screensaver, created by Yuri Norshtein and Valentin Olshvang, is made in a retro style. This is both the palette in which the work is done and eloquent details. Retro style is also a memory of the past, namely of childhood among viewers at the turn of the century. Something kind, familiar, but inexorably unattainable, almost a fairy tale. Memories of loved ones, sometimes funny and awkward toys, simple childhood joys.

The first frames are the transformation of painting into animation. The static becomes dynamics, as if book illustrations come to life in a dream. Before us is a typical still life - artistically organized order on the table. The camera pans and we find ourselves witnessing a turbulent life boiling under the table. Firstly, the tablecloth creates a kind of curtain, this is the first step towards movement in the picture, well, and secondly, the world is accessible to a child, the universe is hidden from the eyes of an adult, that is what is usually hidden under the table.

Yuri Norshtein's screensaver is a mini cartoon with its own story

There is also a typical children's entertainment - soap bubbles. Any adult associates them with fantasy and, of course, with the theme of childhood. The alphabet that one of the characters is leafing through - again, a reference to the first steps in this world, to primary school... Sweets: condensed milk and jam are a favorite children's delicacy. Animated toys are another element of the children's world. It is worth noting that all these actions take place simultaneously. It is very difficult to see them. Therefore, it is interesting to watch the screensaver several times and discover more and more new details in it.

The hare, with the help of a bell (this is how the screen saver melody of the program begins), calls the characters from under the table to watch the evening fairy tale. Here you can see a kind of reference to the motives of the story of Lewis Carroll "Alice in Wonderland". Tea drinking and the March hare are quite obvious rhymes, given that we are, definitely not "on the surface". Again, the clock and how the character deftly handles it is another reference to Carroll's motives.

The watch case has its own stage and its own curtain, which continues to develop the theme of the theater, given by the stage frame of the tablecloth.

The theme of the game is continued by the children's railway, using which the characters rush to their destination. The climax of the screen saver - the toy heroes sat down in front of an imaginary screen to watch the program.

The second part of the screensaver is a lullaby. Its plot is getting ready for bed. A through motive is the decoration of the space. There are partitions, a dollhouse, and screens. The world around the child is just a decoration in which he plays out his ideas (is it really so different from the world of an adult). But dreams are a true world, decorations are not needed there, everything is "for real."

Screensaver of Yuri Norshtein to the "spokushki" was created for a year and a half

Saturated with allusions and deep meaning, Yuri Norshtein's screensaver took a year and a half to create. But it was not appreciated by the audience.

Perhaps because its idea lies not in the concept of the design of a children's program, but in reflections on the topic of childhood as such. And this is too difficult for small viewers to perceive. By the way, Japanese businessmen were ready to purchase the resulting material, but the deal did not take place. The history of Russian television has been replenished with another forgotten masterpiece.

The idea of \u200b\u200bdedicating an entire exhibition to a two-minute TV screen saver seems absurd. But what if the author of the animated miniature is a living classic Yuri Norstein, and the program for which it was created is the popularly beloved “Good night, kids!”?

In 1999, Norshtein, together with artist Valentin Olschwang, created the introductory and final videos for the children's program on Channel One. They lasted only two years on the air: their parents complained about a creepy hare and a hooligan bear - Norstein's world seemed to them too phantasmagoric for harmless fairy tales.

15 years later, we have to admit that this miniature, which did not take root on TV, is the last completed work of a 75-year-old master who, God willing, will finish his Gogolian "long-term construction", but when it will be ... become the key to the magical worlds of art and childhood.

Considering the endless sketches of cartoon characters, one can only be amazed at how many nuances, details, plastic finds are hidden in these two minutes of the video. But most importantly, we see how, step by step, an amazing atmosphere is created, which is typical for the top Norstein works - "Hedgehog in the Fog" and "Tales of Fairy Tales".

In essence, the film was made “from sight” - right away, without script development, - Yuri Norshtein comments. - Recording a film with a storyboard is a more organic option for animation than a verbal one, since cinema is a plastic art in motion. And where else can you accurately consider the development of an action, if not in a storyboard?

Norstein never concealed that he was a director and not a draftsman. A completely different matter is the bewitching collages by Valentin Olschwang based on the cartoon. They are made with paint on transparent plastic, and sometimes the author uses several layers of the substrate, achieving the depth of the picturesque space.

The exposition "Every evening before bedtime ..." is located on two floors: the upper one is occupied by materials for "Good night, kids!", And the lower one is occupied by installations by artists of the new generation. It is this "addition" that turns the exhibition of working materials into a conceptual art project.

From the second floor to the "zero" staircase, decorated with children's toys. The journey to the kingdom of Morpheus, which for millions of children begins with "Good night, kids!", Ends in a dark room with bizarre obsessions. And the first thing we see is the installation "Dream ..." by Alexei Tregubov.

An overturned bed floats in the air. In the sheet hanging from her, apparently, a solid support is hidden, but it really looks like a miracle, possible only in a dream. Next - a construction of glowing neon ruins, from behind which a lamp-moon peeps out. "In a fairy tale, you can ride the moon ..." - favorite lines are recalled, but the author Olga Bozhko points to another first

A red-haired girl, a darned bear, a hare with a pocket watch and big, like human teeth drinking tea, rush to the puppet theater for the beginning of the evening performance, drive home on a toy locomotive. The girl, sheltering all her plush pets, extinguishing the candle and scratching her bare foot, hides under the blanket. So in 2000, the program "Good night, kids!" Began and ended. The screen saver, created by Yuri Norshtein in the manner of old Russian fairy tales, is mysterious and a little melancholic, did not last long on the screens, was removed and has been kept in the director's archives to this day.

Today, this screensaver has become the main exhibit of the Every Evening Before Sleep Exhibition, a new project of the Solyanka Gallery, prepared for the 75th anniversary of Yuri Norshtein, author of the Hedgehog in the Fog, Cheburashka and Tale of Fairy Tales cartoons. The artist worked on the introduction to the legendary children's TV show by hand for two years, paying great attention to detail. The result is a 2.5-minute animated video.

According to the organizers of the exhibition,

the work did not take root on television screens, because it was too unusual and slow for mass television, the mini-cartoon lacked optimism.

Evgeny Odinokov / RIA Novosti Yuri Norshtein

The children's program assumed the presence of an uncomplicated introduction, while Norstein's video required concentration, mental work and full involvement in the world created by the artist from the viewer.

True, in 2003 at the Tokyo festival, leading animators and film critics made him one of the 150 best animated films of all time.

At the opening of the exhibition, Yuri Norshtein personally led the guests past film sketches, storyboards, graphic sketches of characters and scenes created by him together with Valentin Olshvang, a Russian director and co-author of Norshtein. Following the chain of editing and display tapes, the process of creating the program "Good night, kids!" could be followed step by step.

“The work has been tremendous, - said Norstein. - We collected the girl from the screensaver literally in parts: from the works of da Vinci, Serov, Morozov, absolutely every detail had a meaning for us. The girl has a lot of roles: she is a child, she is a mistress, she is a mother, a grandmother, she is a friend and she is Madonna. "

The general producer of Channel One, Konstantin Ernst, claims that he became the producer of this “extreme completed work of Norstein”: “Yuri Borisovich is subjective, has an explosive temperament, in general, you cannot call him an agreeable person. But he can. He's just a genius, and that explains everything. And a genius needs either to be helped or not to interfere, - the head of the First Channel told TASS. - That, in fact, in this our joint work I did. For which I am grateful to fate, "Good Nights" and Yuri Borisovich Norstein. "

Norstein and Olschwang are not the only heroes of the exhibition. The curators of the Solyanka Gallery asked the artists inspired by the work of animation directors to show

how they feel the state between reality and sleep, on the very border of falling asleep, when the voice of the unconscious begins to interfere with the monologue of consciousness, and the room changes, ready at any moment to become a mysterious cave, a royal living room or a deserted shore.

The gallery director Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich is sure that telling the child only good tales and to expect that he will grow up to be an honest and decent citizen is to be delusional. “In reality, children expect to be told very different stories - the ones they are actually ready for,” he says.

In the next two months, the basement floor of the Gallery on Solyanka will become a place where children will be allowed to do anything: play with matches, look at the full moon and walk alone through the dark streets. To make this possible, the artist Rosa Po went into the forest with a volume of Icelandic fairy tales and brought to the gallery bare branches, frozen in a circle of moonlight, between which tiny birds glide. Which of this is real, and which is the play of light and shadow on the wall, only the careful eye of a child will calculate. And from the forest you can get straight into the open mouth of a huge clown created by Ivan Razumov. Only adults can be afraid of him, and brave children will climb inside and see how dozens of laughing clowns are already flying along an endless spiral in the video and swallowing small fearless guests.

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"Every evening before bedtime"

Moscow, Gallery on Solyanka, up to 19.2

The subtitle of the exhibition - “Yuri Norshtein and“ Good night, kids! ”” - can only be explained by the fact that it was opened for the 75th anniversary of the great animator and that Norshtein himself acted in the process of working on the screensaver for a children's TV program as a scriptwriter, director and artist -Animator. The second hero of the exposition is the production designer Valentin Olschwang, it was with him that Norshtein worked on the unique, lasting only two and a half minutes, introduction to the program "Good night, kids!" Less than a year and a half, starting in 2000, the screensaver was on the air, then it was filmed as allegedly too difficult for children of the era of clip consciousness (besides, the authors thought to change the musical accompaniment every week). Now this work belongs to the history of cinema. History appreciated the work at its true worth: at one of the festivals in Tokyo, critics and animators included it in the list of the 150 most outstanding cartoons of the planet.

Screensaver frame for the TV program "Good night, kids!" Artists Yuri Norshtein and Valentin Olshwang

Now in the gallery on Zabelina Street they show sketches on film, graphic sketches of characters and scenes, editing and exhibition sheets for this screensaver, many exhibits come from personal archive Norshtein. As a bonus - interactive objects and site-specific installations contemporary artistscreated in dialogue with the poetic world of animation; among the artists - Alena Romanova, Andrey Topunov, German Vinogradov, Rosa Po, Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, Ivan Razumov and Dmitry Kavarga.

As part of the parallel program, children's master classes and a retrospective of Soviet animation masterpieces were organized under the supervision of Yuri Norshtein and film historian Georgy Borodin.

These mysterious dolls

Kiev, Museum of Sholem Aleichem,
up to 12.2

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