Fyodor Khitruk
Filed under: People, Art Director, Character Designer, Director, Color, Russia, Soyuzmultfilm,
Fyodor Savelyevich Khitruk
Occupation / Title:Art Director, Character Designer, Director
Date of birth:01/05/1917
Date of death:03/12/2012
Birthplace:Tver, Russia
Biography
Fyodor Savelyevich Khitruk was born May 1, 1917 in Tver, Russia.
He was a Soviet animator best known for his Vinni Pukh animations, a Russian adaptation of A.A. Milne’s British book series, Winnie the Pooh. Khitruk won numerous awards at several film festivals domestically and globally and was awarded several prestigious titles posthumously.
Khitruk died at the age of 95 in Moscow on December 3, 2012.
Family and early life
He was born into a well-off Jewish family in Russia in the middle of the Russian revolution. After watching Walt Disney Studios’s “Three Little Pigs” in 1933, he was driven towards the world of animation.
Khitruk married Maria Motruk, an animator who worked on most of Khitruk’s films, and they had a son, Andrey Khitruk. Motruk passed away in 1984.
Career outline
In 1938, he got a job in the art department at Soyuzmultfilm, where he spent the rest of his career directing animations.
Khitruk’s first animation as director was Story of One Crime in 1962.
A significant portion of Khitruk’s animations tackled the social aspects and issues of life in the Soviet Union. He also directed cartoons for children, and the most famous of his works were the Vinni Pukh animation trilogy. His version of the titular bear was drastically aesthetically different. Instead of being animated plush animals, the characters were designed to look as if they were actual living creatures, and Christopher Robin was noticeably absent in Khitruk’s version.
His last film was The Lion and the Bull in 1983, and in 1993, he established an animation school and studio called SHAR Studio along with famous Soviet animators Yuri Norstein, Andrey Khrzhanovsky and Eduard Nazarov.
Personal style
Story of One Crime established a new era of animation aesthetics and storytelling in Soviet Union animation, which before the animation’s release were largely imitations of Walt Disney cartoons.
References:
Bergan, Ronald. “Fyodor Khitruk obituary.” The Guardian, 2012.
Collier, Kevin Scott. “Russia’s ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’ Animated Series.” Cartoon Research, 2018.