Hoffmaniada () is a 2018 Russian stop motion-animated feature film from Soyuzmultfilm. The film is one of the first full-length puppet animated film in the recent history of the animation studio. The concept and the art design was done by Mikhail Shemyakin and is edited by Stanislav Sokolov and Veronika Pavlovskaya, written by Sokolov and Viktor Slavkin, and directed by Sokolov.
The screenplay incorporates story lines and characters from the work of E. T. A. Hoffmann (Little Zaches Called Cinnabar, The Golden Pot and The Sandman), with the main character being Hoffmann himself. In particular, it focuses on the duality between the imaginative universe of his writings and his real-life profession as a government clerk (based on his letters and journals). The film stars the voices of , Slava Polunin, , , Anna Artamonova, Aleksey Petrenko, , and Aleksandr Shirvindt.
The first twenty minutes of the film were screened on 20 November 2006, in Petersburg House of Cinema and received positive reactions from various news outlets. The animated film was released in Russia on 11 October 2018 and is denoted as the entryway of the modern Soyuzmultfilm animation studio. The film was later distributed to Japan in 2019. The film has been recognized with accolades of the Golden Eagle Award, Icarus Award, and Brazil Stop Motion International Film Festival award.
Plot The protagonist of the film is Ernst Hoffmann, a young lawyer, musician, and writer who inhabits two dimensions at once: the imaginary world of his fictional works and the ordinary reality of a small town. During the day, Hoffmann sits behind legal papers working in the office, and then gives music lessons. At night, he composes magical stories and operas, dreaming of one day seeing his opera Undine on the big stage. He does secretly imagine transporting himself into the world of his magical fantasies. Soon, the young man could no longer distinguish between dream and reality. In the images of the heroes that Hoffmann himself penned, he will have to go through the most amazing and danger-filled adventures, which might not be merely fantasies from his own fairy-tales. The adventures include an underwater excursion, a sword-fight, and a ballet at the theatre.
Ernst Hoffmann becomes the titular character student Anselm who is featured in a romantic film with meetings with heroines in different times of his life: the first-in the beautiful Olympia, and the second-in the magical snake-girl Serpentine, and the third-in the posh Veronica. However, Ernst is subjected to the sorcery of an old merchant, the charlatan Coppelius and the watchmaker Paulman. Sandman the dreamy student is also obsessed with Olympia, a soulless clockwork-automaton and daughter of physicist mechanic Paulman. The wise royal archivist Lindhorst exiled from Atlantis patronizes Ernst and his literary hero, the student Anselm. Turning into a Fire-Salamander, he resists Ernst's plans to woo his daughter Serpentina. They make sinister plans against the main character. Love and magic intrigues are intertwined and happily resolved at the end of the film.
Voice cast
as Ernst Hoffmann / Anselm Aleksey Petrenko as Coppelius / Sandman as physicist Paulman / Top secret parrot Alexander Lenkov as the Old Witch (in the first version of the cartoon) Slava Polunin as Coppelius in the image of the pastor Anna Artamonova as Serpentina / Veronika / Olympia Nikolay Kondrashov (voice) (voice) (voice) Aleksandr Shirvindt as Lindhorst / Salamander
History and technique Soyuzmultfilm was ready to revive their animation studio. The establishment from Moscow like other businesses was beleaguered by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Despite the challenges, in 2001, Soyuzmultfilm confirmed about a grand project based on the works of German 19th century author E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776-1882). Soyuzmultfilm previously has not produced a feature film since 1985. The project combines the best traditions of classic Russian animation and modern technology.На "Союзмультфильме" оживляют мир сказок Гофмана (video). TVKultura. 2013-09-19. The film is Soyuzmultfilm's entry to the digital media industry and a turning point in its history. The film became one of the largest full-length and technically complex cartoons in the studio's recent history that took over fifteen years of production. The studio invited Mikhail Shemyakin to the project as animation director.
Both Germany and Russia are patrons of Hoffmann's stories. Russia in particular is linked to Hoffmann, as the author was born in the Kingdom of Prussia, Kaliningrad. Hoffmann is associated with the music of Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Almost all of the children in Russia know who Hoffmann is because of his fairy-tale The Nutcracker. The word "Hoffmaniada" () is part of the Russian lexicon meaning absurd or preposterous.
Mikhail Shemyakin the acclaimed theatre artist and sculptor from Saint Petersburg was acquainted with Hoffmann's fairy-tales ever since a young age. Shemyakin, was a patron of German romanticism literature. Hoffmann's stories were noteworthy to the director whom he believes has influenced Russian authors such as Dostoevsky, Gogol, and Serapion Brothers. Shemyakin is a resident of East Germany, and his favourite city is Königsberg (Kaliningrad) where his father was commandant just before World War 2. There he would grow up reading about Hoffmann and Brothers Grimm. As an artist, he can discern an Hoffmann-like influence in all the cities in Russia he would visit. In 2001, Shemyakin already was an Hoffmann artist who created sketches for costumes, sets, and masks for the ballet The Nutcracker for the Mariinsky Theatre. The director had an initial idea of adapting the stories to the theatre screens. The project was initiated by Soyuzmultfilm director Akop Kirakosyan, who invited Shemyakin to the project. Animation director Stanislav Sokolov stated Mikhail Shemyakin's direction gave new impetus to the art of drawing and animation at Soyuzmultfilm.
The director and script writer of the film is Stanislav Sokolov who has previously directed Shakespeare: The Animated Tales in the 1990s. The veteran animator from Soyuzmultfilm who has previously experience working with Soviet Union artists Ivan Ivanov-Vano and Boris Nemensky worked on one of the last animation films produced in the historic Soyuzmultfilm studio in 25 Dolgorukovskaya Street, near the Novoslobodskaya metro station. Sokolov was interested in such a production ever since the 1970s. During the pre-perestroika times, Sokolov applied for the film concept but the idea was shelved because Hoffmann's stories were deemed too frightful for children and mystical for adults.Actual filming for the pilot began in late 2005 using stop-motion puppet animation as the medium to bring to animated life the various characters of the stories by E.T.A Hoffmann. Director Sokolov states, "Hoffmann's novels and short stories are perfect for stop motion. It is a technique that allows you to combine the visual effects of animated cinema with the materiality of the resources used. Thus, we create a tuning fork between real and fantasy elements."
The most active period of creativity occurred in 2005, when Shemyakin in the suburbs of New York City, made about 20 sketches of Hoffmaniada dolls in a short time. The main production designer of the film was Elena Livanova. Livanova created images of minor characters and turned some of Shemyakin's sketches into working sketches, and also translated the sketches into technical drawings for making dolls. Elena Livanova was assisted by the artist Nikolay Livanov. In total, about 150 dolls were created for the film.
The film was first intended as three independent film adaptations (, The Golden Pot, and The Sandman). However, the final film combines all the tales into a single narrative. With the exception of the popular Nutcracker, most of the characters of the German classics of Hoffmann are rarely filmed in cinematic format. Central to the film will be the character, E.T.A. Hoffmann himself, who is rejuvenated as a poor student Anselm who travels and interleaves the many fairy-tales described by the film. The film was intended to feature unusual fantastic interiors such as a crystal city, Atlantis, and a story line with deep philosophical meaning. The film is framed as a story within a story style where the author E.T.A. Hoffmann himself is transported into the magical world of his own fairy-tales and lives with his own characters. The film depicts the author as participating in his own plots where good triumphs over evil. The film makers wanted to unearth the inner emotions and thoughts the author himself would have undergone when writing the dramatic stories such as The Sandman.
Production Development
In November 2006, a preliminary twenty minute exhibition was held in Petersburg House of Cinema, featuring the main cast of about twenty puppets. Each puppet took no less than a month to make. The full film will have over 150 puppets, some of which will appear on the screen for only a few seconds. In the spring of 2008, a group of puppeteers created the dolls first before the script was made. The actual filming period for the rest of the film began in the summer. The animators wished to convey different layers of creativity and believed the film will be realized with utmost care. So they believed a slow production cycle while focusing more on details.
In 2008, after the completion of the sketches for the images of cartoon characters, the next stage in the production of dolls and filming process began. Initial reaction kept referencing the similarity of facial expressions between the puppet Hoffmann and director Stanislav Sokolov. A report from 1 September 2010 showed that work was still ongoing. On 3 June 2011, Soyuzmultdesign published an official booklet for the upcoming film, which says that preparation for shooting the second and final part of the film began on 3 March 2011, and that the final 90-minute film would be released in May 2014. Also, the official English name was revealed to be Hoffmaniada. On 23 July 2013, it was reported that the film is scheduled to be released in 2015.«Союзмультфильм» превратят в культурный центр. Izvestiya. July 23, 2013. The cast of Aleksey Petrenko voiced Sandman, as Paulman, and as Ernst Hoffmann. Anna Artamonova voiced all the three heroines.
The effects of the Soviet Union collapse The film was intended as a wide release film of 78 minutes within the scope of ambition in context of the days of insolvency in 2001. A premiere at the Petersburg House of Cinema was held in 2006 despite the constrained budget. The animators then once thought of getting financial assistance from the West. In a 6 September 2010 interview, Shemyakin said that if funding were given, the film would be finished in a year and a half. However, as of January 2011, the film crew were either not being paid at all (as during one 6-month period) or being paid very little, so progress was very slow. The production cycle faced many discontinuations.
The studio was also battling the aftermath of the economic downturn bought by the Soviet Union collapse in 1991. In 1998, the ruble faced devaluation that bought on financial debt to many companies that lasted to the turn of the 21st century. From the most acclaimed animation studio of Russia, in 2006 their studio built in 1936 was almost sold to real estate developers. A land dispute against the budget-constrained and workforce-downsized association was pitting the animators as they drew and recorded Hoffmaniada.