Aleksandr Petrov

Aleksandr Petrov was born on Jul 17, 1957 in USSR [now Russia]. Aleksandr Petrov's big-screen debut came with Winter Days directed by Mark Baker in 2003. Aleksandr Petrov is known for Dostoevskiy directed by Vladimir Khotinenko, Aleksey Shevchenko stars as Dvoretskiy and Evgeniy Mironov as Dostoïevski. Aleksandr Petrov has got 40 awards and 13 nominations so far. The most recent award Aleksandr Petrov achieved is National Animation Awards. The upcoming new tvshow Aleksandr Petrov plays is Dostoevskiy - Season 1 which will be released on May 22, 2011.

He studied art at VGIK (state institute of cinema and TV). He was a disciple of Yuri Norstein at the Advanced School for screenwriters and directors (Moscow).After making his first films in Russia, in Canada he adapted the novel Le vieil homme et la mer (1999), resulting in a 20-minute animated short - the first large-format animated film ever made. Technically impressive, the film is made entirely in pastel oil paintings on glass, a technique mastered by only a handful of animators in the world. By using his fingertips instead of a paintbrush on different glass sheets positioned on multiple levels, each covered with slow-drying oil paints, he was able to add depth to his paintings. After photographing each frame painted on the glass sheets, which was four times larger than the usual A4-sized canvas, he had to slightly modify the painting for the next frame and so on. It took Aleksandr Petrov over two years, from March 1997 through April 1999, to paint each of the 29,000+ frames. For the shooting of the frames a special adapted motion-control camera system was built, probably the most precise computerized animation stand ever made. On this an IMAX camera was mounted, and a video-assist camera was then attached to the IMAX camera. The film was highly acclaimed, receiving the Academy Award for Animated Short Film and Grand Prix at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival.After this, Aleksandr Petrov has maintained a close relationship with Pascal Blais Studio in Canada, which helped fund Le vieil homme et la mer (1999), where he works on commercials.He returned to Yaroslavl in Russia to work on his latest film, Moya lyubov (2006), which was finished in spring 2006 after three years' work and had its premiere at the Hiroshima International Animation Festival on August 27, where it won the Audience Prize and the Special International Jury Prize. On March 17, 2007, Moya lyubov (2006) was theatrically released at the Cinema Angelika in Shibuya, (Japan) by Studio Ghibli, as the first release of the "Ghibli Museum Library" (theatrical and DVD releases of Western animated films in Japan).Petrov's style from the late 1980s onward can be characterized as a type of Romantic realism. People, animals and landscapes are painted and animated in a very realistic fashion, but there are many sections in his films where Petrov attempts to depict a character's inner thoughts and dreams. In Le vieil homme et la mer (1999), for example, the fisherman dreams that he and the marlin are brothers swimming through the sea and the sky. In Moya lyubov (2006), the main character's illness is represented by showing him being buried beneath freshly fallen snow on a dark night.In a 2009 interview, Petrov stated that he was jobless and using-up the last of his previously earned money. A 2010 article stated that Petrov wants to create an animated feature film with his technique, but cannot start because of lack of funds.In 2014, Petrov directed a three-minute animated sequence for the Sochi paralympic games called Firebird. In an interview later that year, Petrov confirmed that if he can find the funding, he would like to work on a feature film in the future using his signature style, and stated that he is working on a film project but that it is progressing with great difficulty.In July 2016 Petrov sat on the board of directors for the International Film Festival of Poetic Animation held in Pergola, Italy.