Door

Posted on: April 6, 2007 | Views: 86 | Comment

This clip is from a 1986 short film directed Nina Shorina tells a story of bizarre inhabitants of a crumbling apartment house go to enormous trouble getting in and out of the building without using the front door - even after a boy demonstrates that it's unlocked. Door satirizes the mismanaged life Soviet citizens endured for decades.

Born in Moscow, Shorina began working at Soyuzmultfilm in 1976 and directed several children's films, including Poodle. Just prior to perestroika, Soyuzmultfilm's administration approved Door, a script ostensibly about a boy repairing a door, believing it would also be a film for children. However, the film Shorina delivered in 1986 was for a grown-up audience, the first of a trilogy that would explore the Soviet citizen's reaction to the dramatic political changes sweeping the Soviet Union. The state film censors threatened to shelve the film. After the Door won numerous international prizes - by which time the sweeping changes of perestroika had firmly taken root - the censors apologized to Shorina.

This film can be watched in its entirety on the Masters Of Russian Animation DVD set - an extraordinary collection of Russia's most important animated short films by Russia's world renowned directors.