Heart (found Soviet animated short film; 1971)

A still from the animated film.

Status: Found

Date found: 09 Apr 2023

Found by: Igor Zhuravlev, AleksKV, Mikhail Podolsky, Petr Amelin

Heart (Russian: Сердце) is a 1971 Soviet animated short film that was written & directed by Boris Stepantsev^[1] and produced by Soyuzmultfilm. It was shot by order of World Health Organization.

Plot

The main character lives in a heart that functions as an apartment for him. However, he has several bad habits: he drinks alcohol, smokes, and overeats. He always stays inside and does not leave the house. This leads to him ruining his health and causing alarm signals to be heard every time his heart starts to change. His heart becomes increasingly weak, shrinking and cracking, and in pain. These warning signals are sent to the person who is meant to listen to them, but the hero does not want to hear them. After completely destroying his room, the hero eventually dies. However, later on, a nurse appears who resurrects the hero.

Production Crew

Writer, Director: Boris Stepantsev
Art Direction: Anatoly Savchenko, Nikolai Erykalov
Music: Nikita Bogoslovsky
Director of Photography: Mikhail Druyan
Sound Engineer: Georgy Martynyuk
Animation: Yuri Butyrin, Victor Likhachev, Anatoly Solin, Renata Mirenkova, Olga Orlova, Marina Rogova, Irina Svetlitsa
Film Editor: Valentina Turubiner
Editor: Raisa Frichinskaya
Production Manager: Lubov Butyrina
Consultant: Dr. Toma Strasser, Ion Popescu-Gopo

Premiere

The animated film was shown at 6th International Film Festival on Health Protection for Socialist Countries in 1972 (Niš, Serbia) and at 5th International Film Festival Dedicated to the Work of the Red Cross in 1973 (Varna, Bulgaria), where the director received awards at both film festivals^[2]. It also appeared on French TV on October 1st, 1973.

Availability

For a long time, little was known about this cartoon. Only stills, shorter black-and-white version in French & the Animator.ru page on animated film were available online. On April 9th, 2023, the cartoon was rediscovered on the Mults.info forum^[3]. After that, it was uploaded on YouTube on April 13th, 2023.