MIFF 2018, XIII: Ivan Leonodovich Maximov: Bizarre, darkly humorous

Ivan Maximov (sometimes spelt Maksimov), is a Producer, Screenwriter, Artist, Animator and Teacher from Russia. Maximov was born in Moscow in 1958 and studied at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (1976-82), following it up with a workshop course in cinema, under directors and screenwriters, like A.Yu. Khrzhanovsky and V.M. Ugarova.

At the beginning of his creative career, Ivan worked as an illustrator in various magazines (Quant, Energia, Sputnik), as a photographer at the Institute of Biophysics of the Academy of Medical Sciences, as an engineer at the Space Research Institute, and as a cartoonist in the Vremya Novosti newspaper. Later he set-up a studio of computer graphics and animation, called Virtual Studio Ivan Maximov Production. Besides producing animation films, he creates logos and company symbols, and undertakes jobs for newspapers, magazines and books.

Sleva Napravo (1989) USSR; 4 min; Without Dialogue; was the first film made by Maximov. From what appears to be a meat grinder, cylindrical forms emerge that metamorphose into a sequential movement, from left to right. From this metamorphosis arise curious creatures that interact with each other, to end up being part of an imaginary machine, functional for those who activated it.

Among his most talked about works is the film Provincial School (1992), less than five minutes in length. It is about a most unusual country school where the kids resemble foetuses of unknown species of humans and animals, at different stages of development. The Teacher is a huge, elephantine being, who communicates in low rumbles, and spits out an arithmetic problem to be solved. The kids defeat the teacher in the end! It uses an animation style that Maximov invented. A Golden Bear at the Berlinale came his way that same year for Bolero, a 5’27” animated short, about a traveller who follows his own tail.

N+4 (1993) is surrealistic, about statues, imaginary creatures, a balloon and more, set to the music of M. Berezovsky: Concert for 4 Instruments and harpsichord-Fuga. Maximov was the Director and Art director of the computer game Full Pipe, for MTV (2004, based on the game Full Pipe). The story begins when "Dude", a snail-like man, in a skirt, wakes up to find that one of his sandals has fallen down a manhole beneath his bed. He ventures into the sewers to retrieve his sandal, only to find that he can't get out again. The objective of the game is to escape the sewers, helped by a cast of bizarre, darkly humorous sewer dwellers. Out of Game (2012) is a short cartoon, about the relationship of three abandoned toys, thrown by fate into an attic.

Bum-Bum, Doch Rybaka (2013) tells the tale of a lone fisherman with a long nose, who adopts a small elephant, without any qualms, and the elephant believes that the man is his mother. It is eight minutes long. The film won the Grand Prix at the 44th annual Tampere Film Festival. His latest work is called Alternative Walk. It is shot in HD, and, as is often the case with his films, it is five minutes long, and has no dialogue. A baby escapes from his stroller, and, on his way he meets impossible characters.