The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman Balda (1934)

Original title

Базар

Directed by

Mikhail Tsekhanovsky

Genre

cinematic fairy tale

Country

Soviet Union

Runtime

4 min

Rating

5.0 of 10 from 3 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This is a Soviet cartoon fairy tale based on a Pushkin poem. It tells the story of a priest who hires a clever workman named Balda. Only a short marketplace scene survives from the original film.

playfulwhimsicallivelyfolksymusicalnostalgicincompletehistorical

What happens

The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman Balda (Сказка о попе и о работнике его Балде) is a partially lost Soviet feature length cartoon directed by the husband-and-wife team, Mikhail Tsekhanovsky and Vera Tsekhanovskaya. It is based on the eponymous fairy-tale in verse by Alexander Pushkin. The score was composed by Dmitri Shostakovich. The only surviving scene (2 1/2 minutes) is called Bazaar (Marketplace). The rest of the film reels were lost in the bombing of the Lenfilm studio during the Siege of Leningrad in 1941. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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