Hoffmaniada

Did You Know?

• A series of 26 13-minute episodes called Tales of Hoffmann was planned for television, using the same puppets as the film.
• The film is dedicated to script writer and playwright Славкин, Виктор Иосифович, who died during post-production.
• The remaining Hoffmaniada puppet pavilion is still featured in the exhibition hall of Soyuzmultfilm in Moscow.

Plot

The protagonist is Ernst Hoffmann, a young lawyer, musician, and writer who inhabits two dimensions: the imaginary world of his fictional works and the ordinary reality of a small town. By day he works in an office and gives music lessons; by night he composes magical stories and operas, dreaming of seeing his opera Undine on stage. He secretly imagines transporting himself into his fantasies, soon unable to distinguish dream from reality. In the images of his own heroes, he undergoes adventures including an underwater excursion, a sword-fight, and a ballet. Ernst becomes the student Anselm, involved romantically with three heroines: Olympia, the snake-girl Serpentine, and Veronica. He is subjected to sorcery by the merchant Coppelius and the watchmaker Paulman. The archivist Lindhorst, exiled from Atlantis, patronizes Ernst. Love and magic intrigues are happily resolved.

History and technique

Soyuzmultfilm, beleaguered after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, confirmed a grand project based on Hoffmann's works in 2001. The studio had not produced a feature film since 1985. The project combines classic Russian animation traditions with modern technology, marking Soyuzmultfilm's entry into digital media. Mikhail Shemyakin, an acclaimed theatre artist and sculptor from Saint Petersburg, was invited as animation director.

Shemyakin, a patron of German romanticism, had created sketches for The Nutcracker ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre in 2001. He believed Hoffmann influenced Russian authors such as Dostoevsky and Gogol. Animation director Stanislav Sokolov stated that Shemyakin's direction gave new impetus to the art of drawing and animation at Soyuzmultfilm. The film took over fifteen years of production and became one of the largest full-length and technically complex cartoons in the studio's recent history.

Production

In November 2006, a preliminary twenty-minute exhibition was held in Petersburg House of Cinema featuring about twenty puppets, each taking no less than a month to make. The full film used over 150 puppets, some appearing for only seconds. In spring 2008, puppeteers created dolls before the script was made; filming began that summer. Animators believed a slow production cycle focusing on details was necessary.

Initial reaction noted similarity between the puppet Hoffmann and director Stanislav Sokolov. Work continued through 2010. On 3 June 2011, an official booklet announced preparation for shooting the second and final part began on 3 March 2011, with a planned release in May 2014. The cast included Aleksey Petrenko as Sandman, Любимцев and Павел Евгеньевич as Paulman, Vladimir Koshevoy as Ernst Hoffmann, and Anna Artamonova voicing all three heroines.

The film faced funding difficulties; in a 2010 interview, Shemyakin said that if funded, the film would be finished in a year and a half. Crew members were sometimes unpaid for six-month periods.

Release

Hoffmaniada visited Russian cities including Siberia in 2014 as part of the VGIK-95 film train program. On 11 February 2016, an exhibition 'Meetings with Hoffmann' opened at the Regional Historical and Art Museum of Vienna. The film was anticipated for screenings by end of 2016, but post-production delayed the official premiere to fall 2018. In 2017, Stanislav Sokolov presented excerpts at the International Youth Film Forum in Sochi.

The film was shown at the 68th Berlin International Film Festival on 18 February 2018, where distributors from France and Germany appraised it. The Russian House of Science and Culture in Berlin constructed an exhibit about the film. At the 13th Open Russian Festival of Animated Films in March 2018, Hoffmaniada officially premiered in Russia. It was part of the cultural program at the IV Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok in 2018. Wide-release premiere occurred in October 2018.