Yuri Norstein, the world-renowned Russian animation master behind Hedgehog in the Fog and Tale of Tales, wants his drawings, puppets, storyboards, film reels and equipment to end up with Hayao Miyazaki and the Ghibli Museum in Japan.
«I need to make sure I draw up a will so that my work doesn’t simply end up in some [Russian] film museum,» Norstein told Russia’s YouTube channel Mikhail Kozhukhov’s Travel Club.
«Let [my works] go to Japan, either to the Ghibli Museum or to Miyazaki’s museum. Miyazaki, if he’s still alive… We’re the same age; he turns 85 this year too.»
There is something fitting about Japan being proposed as the home for Norstein’s works. The Russian animation great has often spoken of his love for the country and of finding there a creative sensibility more in tune with his own, one that, in his words, pulls an audience quietly into the world of an artist rather than imposing itself.
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How Norstein helped shape Miyazaki
The admiration between the two filmmakers goes back decades, but the clearest line of artistic influence runs from Norstein to Miyazaki. The University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts notes that Miyazaki has cited Norstein as an influence, particularly the Soviet animator’s Hedgehog in the Fog and Tale of Tales.
Miyazaki’s esteem was unusually strong. Miyazaki is said to have described Norstein as an artist «above the clouds.» Hedgehog in the Fog, the 1975 story of a small hedgehog wandering into a mysterious mist, also became one of the works most closely associated with Norstein’s influence on Japanese animation.
The Ghibli Museum itself made that respect tangible. From late 2003 into early 2004, the museum devoted an exhibition to Norstein, screening Tale of Tales, The Heron and the Crane, Hedgehog in the Fog and Fox and Hare, while also producing a booklet about his work and life.
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