A cartoon concludes as Freebird turns into a storefront movie theater

March 30, 2008
This past Friday, Aleksey Budovskiy (seen to the left in silhouette at the projector's helm) won the capacity crowd over with his rare cartoons from Russia. An amazing selection that included work by his colleagues Aleksandr Tatarskiy, Mikael Aldashin, Ivan Maximov, Zoya Kireeva, Sergey Gordeev, and Konstantin Bronzit, Aleksey concluded with animated shorts of his own creation. He's promised to return and show other pieces from his considerable film library. He was here in between film festivals, where he's currently touring his latest film, "Last Time in Clerkenwell," in which a Royal Legion of birds use London as their base of power to expand their Bird Empire beyond the earth's boundaries. It's an accompanying video for the group (The Real) Tuesday Weld, who he has collaborated with before (on the first chapter of his bird saga: "Bathtime in Clerkenwell"). Both have won him a good deal of acclaim, including jury prizes at festivals in the US, Russia, Europe, and Canada. But he's also lent his considerable humor and vision to commercials and educational shorts, like this recent series on teaching kids the basics of English: Dog.

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Aleksey was here as part of our Russia! Magazine series, which Michael Idov and Boris Kachka have been coordinating. By happenstance, Matvei Yankelevich (the first speaker in the series) delivered the latest releases from his small press, Ugly Duckling. For those not familiar with Ugly Duckling Presse, they are an independent, non-profit publisher operating out of Brooklyn's Can Factory at 3rd and 3rd in the Gowanus neighborhood (and home to a slew of arts organizations and businesses like Issue Project Room, fellow publishers Akashic and Archipelago, and Lite Brite Neon). Freebird is one of UDP's partner bookstores, and we carry a number of their titles, including their 6x6 magazine, which sells for a dirt cheap $3. All of their books are limited runs, letter press, and beautifully bound productions. Matvei sent a graphic novel by Ava Fedorov called Book of Fears and a new collection of poetry by Eugene Ostashevsky. Entitled Morris Imposternak, Pursued By Ironies, it follows the travails of sad sack Morris as he ponders love and loss. I have just finished Yuri Olesha's 1927 madcap satire of Soviet life, Envy, and I can't help but find Morris a kindred spirit of that novel's thwarted protagonist, Nikolai Kavalerov. Eugene is a frequent translator who, like Matvei, has been instrumental in bringing Daniil Kharms's tricky idiomatic Russian stories to English readers. And like Kharms, Eugene has a wry grasp of his character's wrenching search for meaning:

What is the point of anything when everything has an end?
The world is like

The fiddling of a deaf musician in an empty room
He finishes, bows--to whom?--and modestly leaves

And then there's silence.
How is the silence afterwards different from the silence during?

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Finally, the store has a kind of bayou feel to it at the moment as the city moves closer to completing their work on Columbia Street. There is progress, but at that blazing municipal pace. However, we encourage you to revel in the rare opportunity to see Freebird with a front yard (it won't last past this week) and walk the gangplank into our space. The backyard--weather permitting--is open.
--Peter Miller