Ladislas Starevich
| Ladislav Starevich | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
Władysław Starewicz August 8, 1882 Moscow, Russian Empire |
| Died | February 26, 1965 (aged 82) Fontenay-sous-Bois, France |
| Nationality | Russian |
| Occupation | Film director, stop motion animator |
Władysław Starewicz (Russian: Владисла́в Алекса́ндрович Старе́вич, Polish: Władysław Starewicz; August 8, 1882 – February 26, 1965) was a Russian, Polish and French stop-motion animator notable as the author of the first puppet-animated film (i.e. The Beautiful Lukanida (1912)). He also used dead insects and other animals as protagonists of his films. (His name is variously transliterated into English as Starewicz, Starevitch, Starewich and Starewitch.)
Władysław Starewicz was born in Moscow, Russia to Polish parents (father Aleksander Starewicz from Surviliškis near Kėdainiai and mother Antonina Legęcka from Kaunas, both from "neighbourhood nobility", in hiding after the failed Insurrection of 1863 against the Tsarist Russian domination), and had lived in Lithuania which at that time was a part of the Russian Empire. The boy was raised by his grandmother in Kaunas, then the capital of Kaunas Governorate. He attended Gymnasium in Dorpat (today Tartu, Estonia).
Starewicz had interests in a number of different areas; by 1910 he was named Director of the Museum of Natural History in Kaunas, Lithuania. There he made four short live-action documentaries for the museum. For the fifth film, Starewicz wished to record the battle of two stag beetles, but was stymied by the fact that the nocturnal creatures inevitably die whenever the stage lighting was turned on. Inspired by a viewing of Les allumettes animées [Animated Matches] (1908) by Émile Cohl, Starewicz decided to re-create the fight through stop-motion animation: by replacing the beetles' legs with wire, attached with sealing wax to their thorax, he is able to create articulated insect puppets. The result was the short film Lucanus Cervus (1910), apparently the first animated puppet film and the natal hour of Russian animation.
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