Leonid Amalrik

Biography

Leonid Amalrik is a Soviet animated film director. Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1965). As a child, Leonid was fond of gymnastics. After an unsuccessful appendicitis operation, he had to spend several months in bed, and in order to pass the time, he began to draw. This fascinated him for the rest of his life. In 1925, Amalric entered the State Technical College of Cinematography (now - VGIK), graduated in 1928 with a diploma of the artist-decorator. From 1926 he worked at the film studio "Mezhrabpom-Rus" as an assistant decorator for directors Abram Room and Vsevolod Pudovkin. In 1928, shortly after graduation, he began working as a cartoon artist at the Gosvoenkino film studio, where he worked with Yuri Merkulov, in particular, made animated inserts for the film "First Horse" (1929). In the early 1930s, Amalric moved to Mezhrabpomfilm. By the mid-1930s he became the most famous animator of Moscow. In 1936 he moved to the newly formed film studio "Soyuzmultfilm". At first he worked in the genre of political satire, then together with Vladimir Polkovnikov he became interested in a modern fairy tale. In 1939 Amalrik put one of the first successful color animated films Limpopo (1939). Amalrik is brought to public acclaim by the opera film The Cat's House (1958) based on the play by Samuil Marshak, the film adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale Thumbelina (1964) and the film The Hippo Who Was Afraid of Inoculations (1966). After the creation of the film Terem-Teremok (1971), he stopped working in the cinema.