Eastern European Animation

Eastern European Animation refers to Animated Shows from Eastern Europe, to include Russian and the now defunct Soviet Union, as well as most other ex-socialist European countries. Actually, classifying these as "shows" is very inaccurate; some of them are features, some are actual shows; most of them are isolated shorts. In fact, there were no animated shows in Soviet Union; those that look like ones are series of loosely connected shorts, with long (sometimes over 10 years) intervals between "releases". Overall, network and medium seem to matter much less in Eastern European culture, at least to average viewer—in part because there was only one thing to watch for so many years—so not making distinction between features, shorts and series on this page is justified. However, the post-Fall era animation is more westernized in formal aspects, with a proper division into features, shows and shorts.

Advertisement:

Bear in mind that just because it has the word "East" in the title does not make this trope not part of Western Animation. While cartoons from the former Soviet Block are often significantly different from their West Western counterparts, their stories usually follow similar premises and touch upon closely related subjects. It is the same continent after all.

See also Anime and Asian Animation.

---

Examples

Soviet/Russian

• 38 Parrots
• About Sidorov Vova
• Adventures of Captain Vrungel
• Adventures of Mowgli: Five Russian shorts based on The Jungle Book.
• The Adventures Of Buratino
• The Adventures Of Prince Vladmir
• The Adventures Of Vasia Kurolesov
• Armen Film Animated Shorts (Armenian)
• Breakfast on the Grass (Estonian)
• The Cameraman's Revenge — film from tsarist Russia and one of the earliest examples of stop-motion animation
• Captain Pronin
• The Cat and the Tree
• Cheburashka
• Cossacks
• The Cow
• The Dog Door, based on the short story Goodbye Ravine
• Fantadroms (Latvian)
• Film, Film, Film
• Firing Range
• The Frog Princess
• Gagarin
• The Goat Musician
• The Golden Antelope
• Hedgehog in the Fog
• Heron And Crane
• His Wife Is a Hen
• Icarus and Wisemen
• Interplanetary Revolution
• Investigation Held by Kolobki
• I Shall Give You a Star
• It Was I Who Drew The Little Man (a.k.a. Chelovechka narisoval ya)
• The Key
• A Kitten Named Woof
• Last Year's Snow Was Falling
• Lavatory-Lovestory
• Leopold the Cat
• Little Fox
• Little Longnose
• Masha and The Bear
• Me Cvimad Moval (Georgian)
• Mermaid
• Mitten
• Mother For Little Mammoth
• Mr Walk
• My Love
• The Mystery of the Third Planet
• Nu, Pogodi!
• Once Upon a Dog
• The Old Man and the Sea (1999 animated short film adaptation)
• Plasticine Crow
• Qumi-Qumi
• Scamper the Penguin (Soviet-Japanese co-production)
• The Scarlet Flower
• Sheep & Wolves
• Smeshariki (also known as GoGoRiki in the English dub)
• The Snow Queen (1957) (Soviet adaptation)
• The Snow Queen (2012) (2012 CGI adaptation)
• Suur Toll (Estonian)
• The Soviet short and Russian animated film based on The Nutcracker:
  • The Nutcracker
  • The Nutcracker and the Mouse King
• The animated adaptations of Tales of the Magic Land and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
• There Lived Kozyavin.
• A 1984 adaptation of There Will Come Soft Rains. One would be hard-pressed to find a creepier cartoon.
• A two part adaptation of Treasure Island.
• Town Musicians of Bremen.
• Pif - Paf, Oi-Oi-Oi
• The Return of the Prodigal Parrot
• Three From the Prostokvashino Village (Prostokvashino can be loosely translated as Buttermilk)
  • Holidays in Prostokvashino
  • Winter in Prostokvashino
• We Can't Live Without Cosmos
• Welcome: A Soviet adaptation of Dr Seuss' Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose.
• The Very Blue Beard
• Vinni Pukh (Soviet Winnie-the-Pooh shorts)
• Vovka In Far Far Away Kingdom (Vovka v Tridevyatom tsarstve)
• Five short 1970's cartoons based on Greek Mythology. Remarkably close to the original material, especially considering the heavy Socialistic undertones. Possibly unique in not giving Princess Andromeda a Race Lift. The shorts are "Return from Olympus" (occurring in modern times, with flashback to the Labors of Heracles), "Labyrinth(about Theseus, naturally), "Argonauts", "Perseus", and "Prometheus".
• The Wild Swans
• The Wolf and the Calf.
• Tale of Tales
• A Tale is Told
• Melnitsa Studio's "3 Bogatyrs" movies
  • Alesha Popovich and Tugarin Zmei
  • Dobrynia Nikitich and the Serpent Gorynych
  • Il'ia Muromets and the Nightingale-Robber
  • and to top the trilogy, Three bogatyrs, featuring all three heroes
    • Three bogatyrs and the Queen of Shamaha
    • Three bogatyrs on far shores
    • Three bogatyrs and the horse move
    • Three bogatyrs and the Sea King
    • Three bogatyrs and the Princess of Egypt
    • Three bogatyrs and the throne heir

Advertisement:

Bulgarian

• Planetata na Sakrovishtata

Croatian

• The works of Zagreb Films
  • Ersatz (1961)
  • Igra (1963)
  • Professor Balthazar (1967-78) (also shown in North America on Pinwheel in the 1980s)
  • Tup Tup (1971)
• The Elm-Chanted Forest

Czech

• Creators
  • Adolf Born
  • Gene Deitch after 1960. However, most of them were made for and financed by American distributors.
  • Jiri Trnka
  • Jan Švankmajer
  • Karel Zeman
• Večerníček (‘Little Eveninger’ in English) is a children's programme in which most of the following animated series were featured. Basically, every evening at 7 p.m., it airs an episode. Once all episodes of said series are aired, it starts airing another one.
• Bob And Bobek, two rabbits live in a magicians hat and go on various adventures. One rabbit is smart and hard-working, the other one is lazy and a bit thick (not unlike Chip 'n Dale).
• Club Of The Discarded
• Fantastic Planet
• The Foolish Frog
• The Little Mole (Krtek)
• Max And Sally and the Phenomenal Phone (Mach, Šebestová a kouzelné sluchátko), about two children and a dog who find a torn-off telephone handset which grants them wishes
• Maxidog Fik (Maxipes Fík), about a girl named Ája and her huge talking dog companion
• Mr Krbec and his Animals (O zvířátkách pana Krbce), featuring the merry adventures at Castle Kulíkov of Mr. Krbec the Castle keeper and his friends Kokeš the Cat, Kukula the Owl, Kocanda the Jackdaw and the castle ghost, the spirit of Duke Ruprecht.
• O Misto Na Slunci — first European cartoon to get an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Short Film
• Pat and Mat, two middle-aged men live together and try to build something during an episode. Usually, all kinds of construction accidents and mishap happen, but for some reason, the end result is fine.
  • E.g. they bake Christmas cookies, they get flour everywhere, they burn the cookies to crisps, but realise these super-hard sweets can be used as tiles in their pavement.
• Poppy Doll And Butterfly Bartholomew (O makové panence a motýlu Emanuelovi)
• Staflik And Spagetka (Štaflík a Špagetka), tales of two dogs, a short and long black one and a tall white one.
• Stories Of Amelia The Forest Sprite (Říkání o víle Amálce)
• Rumcajs The Little Bandit Of The Forest (O loupežníku Rumcajsovi), about a cobbler who was banished from the city of Jičín by its uppish mayor Humpál and became a highwayman. He later has a wife called Manka and a son Cipísek.
• The Tales Of Doggie And Moggie (Povídání o pejskovi a kočičce)
• The thirteen Tom and Jerry, Deranged Animation shorts and part of a Western series.
• The Vanished World of Gloves
• Words, Words, Words...

Polish

• Ark
• Blok Ekipa
• Bolek and Lolek
• The Cathedral
• David and the Magic Pearl, a.k.a. Dawid i Sandy
• Dreadfully Titled Movie
• Dziwne Przygody Koziołka Matołka
• Hip-Hip and Hurra
• Kapitan Bomba
• Między Nami Bocianami
• Piesek W Kratkę
• Podróże Kapitana Klipera
• Pomysłowy Dobromir
• Przygody Gapiszona
• Reksio
• Tango
• Zaczarowany Ołówek

East German

• Red Cartoons, a collection of 16 shorts from the ’70s and ’80s. Each cartoon aims to make some benign point; and the stories can vary from the more universal ‘a man neglects a flower in order to reach a star, while a man in the sky does the opposite’ to the more concrete ‘people wearing gas masks because of the pollution emitted by a gas mask factory’.

Advertisement:

Hungarian

• Cat City (Macskafogó), a.k.a. The Cat Trap and its sequel.
• Dragon and Slipper (Sárkány és Papucs)
• The District! (original title: Nyócker!)
• The Fly (original title: A Légy)
• Foam Bath, a.k.a. Bubble Bath (original title: Habfürdő)
• Hugo The Hippo
• Hófehér
• Kerem A Kovetkezot a.k.a. Doktor Bubó
• Rabbit and Deer (original title: Nyuszi és Őz)
• The Rabbit with the Checkered Ears a.k.a. Kockásfülü nyúl, colloquially known by fans of Pinwheel as "Bunny in the Suitcase"
• Lúdas Matyi
• Maestro, an Academy Award-nominated CGI short.
• Magyar Népmesék
• A Mézga család
• Pangea – The Neverending World a.k.a. Rexy, a CGI short.
• The Princess and the Goblin
• The Seventh Brother (original title: A Hetedik Testvér)
• Son of the White Horse (original title: Fehérlófia)
• Three Dirty Dwarves (Part of a video game)
• Time Masters (a Franco-Hungarian effort)
• The Tragedy of Man
• Treasure of Swamp Castle (original title: Szaffi).
• Vízipók-Csodapók
• Vuk the Little Fox
  • Kis Vuk, a.k.a. A Fox's Tale, a rather poorly received sequel.
• Willy the Sparrow

Romanian

• Animat Planet Show
• Miaunel and Balanel - shown in North America on Pinwheel in the 1980s

Serbian

• Technotise Edit I Ja

---

References to Eastern European animation in other media:

Live-Action TV

• Spoofed on The Fast Show with Chanel 9's strange and sadistic animation "Willy Ton Bastardo".

Western Animation

• Spoofed on The Simpsons when Krusty the Clown airs Worker and Parasite in place of Itchy and Scratchy in the Krusty Gets Kancelled episode.

---