Alexandr Petrov
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- For the chess player, see Alexander Petrov.
Alexandr Petrov (also Aleksander Petrov or Aleksandre Petrov) (July 17, 1957) is a Russian animator and animation director. He was born in the village Prechistoye (Yaroslavl Oblast) and lives in Yaroslavl.
He had studied art, in particular at VGIK (State institute of the cinema and TV). He was a disciple of Yuri Norstein in Advanced School for screenwriters and directors (Moscow).
After making his first films in Russia, in Canada he adapted the novel The Old Man and the Sea, resulting in a 20 minute long animated short — the first large-format animated film ever made. Technically impressive, the film is made entirely in pastel oil paintings on glass, a technique mastered by only a handful of animators in the world. By using his fingertips instead of a paintbrush on different glass sheets positioned on multiple levels, each covered with slow-drying oil paints, he was able to add depth to his paintings. After photographing each frame painted on the glass sheets, which was four times larger than the usual A4-sized canvas, he had to slightly modify the painting for the next frame and so on. It took Alexandr Petrov over two years, from March 1997 through April 1999, to paint each of the 29,000+ frames. For the shooting of the frames a special adapted motion-control camera system was built, probably the most precise computerized animation stand ever made. On this an IMAX camera was mounted, and a video-assist camera was then attached to the IMAX camera. The film was highly rewarded, receiving the Academy Award for the best animated short and Grand Prix at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival. Lately, Alexandr Petrov has been working mostly on commercials as part of Pascal Blais Studio [1] in Canada, which also helped fund "The Old Man and the Sea".
[edit] Filmography
- Korova (The Cow) (after Andrey Platonov) (1989)
- Son smeshnogo cheloveka (The Dream of a Ridiculous Man) (after Fyodor Dostoevsky) (1992)
- Rusalka (Mermaid) (after Alexander Pushkin) (1997)
- Starik i More (The Old Man and the Sea) (after Ernest Hemingway) (1999)
- Participated in Winter Days (2003)
- My Love (2006)
[edit] External links
- Alexandr Petrov at the Internet Movie Database
- Pascal Blais Studio - here you can see clips of Petrov's films (enter the English site, then click on "directors")
