Absent-minded Giovanni

 

Hello, it's been over a year since I last posted. Going through school, having a job, and overall losing a bit of interest made me put the blog in a bit of a hiatus. Since I'm currently done with summer classes, I decided that now would be a good time to get back to blogging.

I'd like to discuss the animated Soviet short "Absent-minded Giovanni". A few years ago, I first learned about this short from a Twitter account that posted Soviet animations and was drawn to its unique art style. The backgrounds resembling abstract paintings and the characters having two colors on their faces reminded me of the ENA web series by Joel Guerra , which makes me wonder if it was an inspiration. Maybe I'll make a post on the ENA series one day.

                                                                                           They look similar, huh?

On to the animation itself, the story starts off with Giovanni, the puppet boy, asking his mom to go play outside. His mother lets him but reminds him of his missing sock. Giovanni quickly puts it back on but forgets to put on his shoe. He later goes around the town while playing with the animals until a citizen reminds him of his missing ear. Giovanni is upset about this until he starts playing with a tin can like a soccer ball extremely fast. He runs into another person while trying to remind him that his leg is detached, but it falls on deaf ears (or in Giovanni's case, deaf ear). It cuts back to Giovanni's mom in her house until the mailman arrives and delivers his ear. Another person gives her his leg and more people give her the rest of his body parts until his mother re-attaches him back to normal. Despite all that happening, Giovanni still wants to play outside but this time his mother re-attaches his ear. His mom lets him go outside again but he forgets his shoe, thus ending the short.

I really like how this cartoon looks. The abstract painting style makes the world pop, almost like a children's story book. I really love the way Giovanni animates, with him moving like an actual puppet and how lively the people act. Seeing this made me more interested in watching more Soviet cartoons (like Treasure Island) since they have such a unique look and feel to them. I highly recommend watching it, and it's short too (only three minutes long).

If you want a more in-depth look into the history behind its production, I highly recommend reading the article by Animation Obsessive. It really helped finding information about Absent-minded Giovanni and the history of animation during the Soviet Union era. I'll post the article below. Anyway, thank you for reading. It's hard to believe it's been a year since I last posted. I'll try to post more frequently whenever I can.

Link to the article:

https://animationobsessive.substack.com/p/why-a-cartoon-that-enraged-censors