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The Tale of Arkaim

4 thousand years ago in the South Urals there was a unique "Country of Cities" - a complex of settlements of the Bronze Age. The most famous of them is the fortified settlement of Arkaim, covered with many legends. Despite the art form, the cartoon "The Tale of Arkaim" is completely historical. He tells the story of one day of the inhabitants of the Bronze Age in the Ural steppe. Through the fabulous form, the young viewer will learn how and where the ancient Arkaim people lived, what crafts they owned and how they dressed, what technologies were used to cast metal and make clay pots, and also see an animated reconstruction of the world's oldest chariot found near the settlement of Arkaim.

The cartoon was produced by the Chelyabinsk animation studio "Apparently-invisibly" by order of the Chelyabinsk State Historical and Cultural Reserve "Arkaim" with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Chelyabinsk Region especially for the international action "Night of Museums - 2021".

  • Vyacheslav Alekseenko
    Director
  • Alexandra Petrova
    Screenwriter
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Сказ об Аркаиме
  • Project Type:
    Animation
  • Runtime:
    6 minutes 55 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    May 15, 2021
  • Country of Origin:
    Russian Federation
  • Language:
    Russian
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Vyacheslav Alekseenko

Animation director, teacher. 17 years in the profession. He was educated at the Chelyabinsk State Academy of Culture and Arts with a degree in Film and Television Directing.

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Director Statement

This cartoon is a unique fusion of science and art forms. While working on the script, we read a large number of scientific articles and monographs to figure out how people of the Bronze Age lived in the Ural steppe: what crafts they owned and how they dressed, what technologies were used to cast metal and make clay pots, but most importantly - how they thought of themselves in this world. And it was really necessary to figure it out to convey this to the youngest viewers in simple way. After all, "if you cannot explain something to a 6-year-old child - it means you do not understand it."

Animation artists carefully rendered and animated every detail. We can say that a new world was created from a scratch - the world of so-called "Country of cities" settlement that existed in the Ural steppe 4 thousand years ago. Does it look like the world that the inhabitant of ancient Arkaim actually saw? Big question. After all, it was a non-writing civilization that did not leave us a single literary source - a monument of thought. We could rely only on museum artefacts. But in this we tried to be precise - every ornament, every pot, arrowhead or loom went through the close editing of a scientific consultant. In this respect the cartoon is certainly historical. As much historical as possible for a screen work, which is always an artistic interpretation.