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Yuri Borisovich Norstein (; born 15 September 1941) is a Russian animator best known for his animated shorts Hedgehog in the Fog and Tale of Tales made in collaboration with his wife, Francheska Yarbusova. Since 1981, he has been working on a feature film called The Overcoat, based on the short story by Nikolai Gogol of the same name. According to The Washington Post, "he is considered by many to be not just the best animator of his era, but the best of all time".
The next film in which he had a major role was The Battle of Kerzhenets (1971), a co-production with Russian animation director Ivan Ivanov-Vano under whose direction Norstein had earlier worked on 1969's Times of the Year.
Throughout the 1970s Norstein continued to work as an animator in many films (a more complete list can be found at IMDb), and also directed several. As the decade progressed his animation style became ever more sophisticated, looking less like flat cut-outs and more like smoothly-moving paintings or sophisticated pencil sketches. His most famous film is Tale of Tales, a non-linear, autobiographical film about growing up in the postwar Soviet world.Maya Balakirsky Katz, Drawing the Iron Curtain: Jews and the Golden Age of Soviet Animation (Rutgers University Press, 2016), chapter 8
Norstein uses a special technique in his animation, involving multiple glass planes to give his animation a three-dimensional look. The camera is placed at the top looking down on a series of glass planes about a meter deep (one every 25–30 cm). The individual glass planes can move horizontally as well as toward and away from the camera (to give the effect of a character moving closer or further away). Interview with Yuri Norstein at Radio Free Europe
For many years, he has collaborated with his wife, the artist Francheska Yarbusova, and the cinematographer Aleksandr Zhukovskiy. He met Francheska when he was studying at the Moscow Art School. She became his most loyal collaborator. Together they created the famous Hedgehog in the Fog (1975) and Tale of Tales. Tale of Tales was voted the best animated film of all time at the Animated Olympics, held during the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, Norstein's animations were showered with both state and international awards. Then, in a bitter twist of irony, he was fired from Soyuzmultfilm in 1985 for working too slowly on his latest film, a (presumably) feature-length adaptation of Nikolai Gogol's The Overcoat. By that time he had been working on it with his usual small team of three people for two years and had finished ten minutes.
In April 1993, Norstein and three other leading animators (Fyodor Khitruk, Andrei Khrzhanovsky, and Eduard Nazarov) founded the Animation School and Studio (SHAR Studio) in Russia. The Russian Cinema Committee is among the share-holders of the studio.
To this day, Norstein is still working on The Overcoat – his ardent perfectionism has earned him the nickname "The Golden Snail". The project has met numerous financial troubles and false starts, but Norstein has said that it currently has reliable funding from several sources, both from within and outside of Russia. At least 25 minutes have been completed to date. A couple of short, low-resolution clips have been made available to the public. PBS The Overcoat 1. Retrieved 28 February 2015. PBS The Overcoat 2. Retrieved 28 February 2015. The first 20 minutes of the film have also toured among various exhibits of Norstein's work in Russian museums. The full film is expected to be 65 minutes long.
In 2005, he released a Russian-language book titled Snow on the Grass. Fragments of a Book. Lectures about the Art of Animation, featuring a number of lectures that he gave about the art of animation. That same year, he was invited as "guest animator" to work on Kihachirō Kawamoto's puppet-animated feature film, The Book of the Dead. Details on The Book of the Dead at the Japanese film festival Nippon Connection
On 10 August 2008, the full version of the book Snow on the Grass was released (the "incomplete" 2005 book was 248 pages). The book, which was printed in the Czech Republic and funded by Sberbank, consists of two volumes, 620 pages, and 1700 color illustrations. ??? Snow on the Grass. Retrieved 28 February 2015. The studio stopped working on The Overcoat for nearly a year while Norstein worked to release the book. Одушевление черточек. Время. 28 August 2008. Retrieved on: 25 October 2009.
Hayao Miyazaki considers Norstein "a great artist" Interview with Hayao Miyazaki at the U.S. premiere of Spirited Away and cited Hedgehog in the Fog as one of his favourite animated films. A remote conversation between Yuri Norstein and Hayao Miyazaki at a Russian TV Show ProSvet, on 22 October 2005, hosted by Dmitry Dibrov
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